


One Big, Happy Family

by Sassafras_72



Series: Four-Part Harmony [3]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alex Mercer Has Anxiety (Julie and the Phantoms), Alex Mercer Has Bad Parents (Julie and The Phantoms), Bisexual Flynn (Julie and The Phantoms), Bisexual Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Consensual Underage Sex, Explicit Consent, First Time, Foursome - F/M/M/M, Gay Alex Mercer (Julie and The Phantoms), Getting Mad at the Patriarchy for a Not Insignificant Number of Words, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Like blink and you'll miss it..., Mentions of canon character death, Minor Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Multi, OT4, Panic Attacks, Pansexual Luke Patterson (Julie and The Phantoms), Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Shock, Straight Julie Molina, Women Supporting Women, supernatural sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:41:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28951350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassafras_72/pseuds/Sassafras_72
Summary: A multi-chapter fic of each of the important family members in Julie’s life learning about her relationship with the guys. Companion piece to Four-Part Harmony series.Rated M for depictions of sexual activity and language.
Relationships: Alex Mercer & Julie Molina, Alex Mercer/Julie Molina/Luke Patterson/Reggie Peters, Alex Mercer/Luke Patterson (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex Mercer/Luke Patterson/Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex Mercer/Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Carlos Molina & Julie Molina, Carlos Molina & Reggie Peters, Flynn & Alex Mercer & Julie Molina, Flynn & Julie Molina, Julie Molina & Aunt Victoria, Julie Molina & Ray Molina, Julie Molina/Luke Patterson, Julie Molina/Luke Patterson/Reggie Peters, Julie Molina/Reggie Peters, Luke Patterson/Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Ray Molina & Aunt Victoria
Series: Four-Part Harmony [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2123487
Comments: 6
Kudos: 68
Collections: Kelly's Picks





	1. Flynn

**Author's Note:**

> Tagged for underage sex because character ages are canon compliant. Healthy and consensual teenage sexual exploration is normal, and discussed at length throughout this fic. This companion fic in the series jumps around some in the timeline. Julie is 16/17 and the guys are 17/18 (but, you know, still technically dead)
> 
> This fic covers a variety of scenes throughout the timeline and development of the band’s OT4 relationship. While sexual activity is explored and discussed, this fic does not feature any explicit scenes and is thus rated M. Due to the nature of the sexual relationship between the main characters (ie consentual underage sex) this fic may not be for everyone. Proceed at your discretion.

Flynn prepared herself before opening the doors to the studio the morning after the Orpheum. Ray told her when she walked through the front door without knocking (per usual) that Julie had slept out in the studio. Flynn wasn’t surprised, of course she wanted to be closer to the place where she met her boys. Whether they crossed over or were jolted out of existence, it didn’t matter. Her friend would be grieving today. She pretty much expected to spend the day with her shoulder serving as a living tissue box.

Pushing open the doors, she found Julie sprawled out on the pull out bed. But before she could wake her up, Flynn stilled. The blanket around Julie was draped around her at odd angles. And Julie herself had her head tucked up and resting on something. But there was no pillow, or blanket, or anything supporting her head. It was just floating there, hovering over the mattress.

As Flynn stands agape, Julie stirs on the bed. “Yeah? I’m awake,” she says aloud, a smile blooming on her face as she tilts her head up. Then, as if startled, she turns her head and takes in Flynn at the door, “Oh. Hi Flynn.”

“Hi. Care to explain?” she asked, gesturing to the bed.

Julie sat up in an instant, the blanket being thrown around her feet at the movement. Her best friend looked around the bed and her eyes started filling with tears. Well fuck. The waterworks were starting right off the bat, weren’t they?

“Oh my God. Oh my _God_! It wasn’t a dream.” Julie raised her hand up, curled out in front of her face. She brushed her thumb there for another instant before turning over her shoulder and grabbing with her opposite hand toward nothing at all on the other end of the bed. “You’re here. You’re really still here.”

Flynn’s eyes went wide as Julie threw herself into the air on the bed. But instead of flopping down belly first across the mattress, Julie landed, sprawled out on the very air itself. She clasped her hands around the air, gripping roughly at something as she started to laugh out tears. Julie’s hand moved again. One arm staying splayed over the _nothing_ , but the other snaked up behind her neck, pulling more air down against her. Her head dipped in a third direction, off to the side, before it appeared to hit something with a ‘thunk’ and stop all movement altogether.

Now, Flynn has a best friend with a ghost band. She’s seen some weird shit before. She’s even used to her friend talking to air. But she’s never, never experienced her friend _floating_ on air, or seeming to hug and hold onto it.

“Jules?” Flynn asked tentatively as she settled herself on the very edge of the mattress. “What the fuck is going on?”

Julie turns to face her, a broad smile on her face and her cheeks wet with tears. “They’re here. They didn’t leave me. We broke the curse!” Julie is laughing again, a wet and tear laden laugh. Clinging once more to the air around her.

“That’s awesome!” Flynn congratulated, “But I’m still not understanding this floating in the air thing.”

Julie turned her head to her friend quizzically, “Oh,” she says after a moment, looking at the space on the mattress in the direction of the door, “That makes sense. Alex is saying that it must just look like I’m floating from what you can see.”

“And… What exactly is it that I’m not seeing?”

Julie’s smile beams, and Flynn almost laments not bringing a pair of sunglasses to protect her eyes from how bright it is.

Julie raises her right hand, her fingers spread out and her hand curled almost into a rough claw. “This is Luke’s hand,” she explains to Flynn’s look of confusion. “I’m holding Luke’s hand. I can touch them now!”

After some additional excitement at the prospect of being able to touch, the band is getting up off the couch and folding the mattress back in. Still clad in her pajamas, Julie makes her way to her keyboard and begins to play. Drawing the boys into Flynn’s field of vision just a few moments later. They all look the happiest she’d ever seen them.

Julie dances around the small studio space, just like she normally does, with the guys continuing their instrumentation in the background. To prove her point from earlier, Julie takes the opportunity to make physical contact with each of the guys as she dances around. A soft caress of the hand to Luke’s cheek; hanging off of Reggie’s neck as the two spin together; a bouncing kiss left to the top of Alex’s head as she skips passed his stool behind the kit.

The band keep the instrumentals going for a few minutes as the group all explain what had happened the night before to Flynn. Starting from when the guys got zapped to the Hollywood Ghost Club by Caleb; to being called at last to the Orpheum stage by the power of Julie’s music; to Luke being tugged back by Caleb painfully, but again, Julie’s music helping him to break free; to coming back to the studio and faking the crossover; to Julie’s magical hug; to filling in Carlos (Flynn wasn’t sure yet if him knowing the truth would make things better or worse…); to the now, hopefully permanent, ability to make physical contact with Julie.

Flynn didn’t have a damn clue how any of this worked. To be fair, none of them did. But she had never seen her best friend look so happy in her life. So weird magical properties of the universe be damned, Flynn would do whatever she could to keep that happy smile on her friend’s face for as long as she could.

Which is why, as they’re walking up to the house for breakfast at last, Flynn asks the guys if they can give her and Julie a moment alone. Once her friend confirms the absence of the ghosts, Flynn’s face splits into a knowing smirk.

“So you do know what this means, right?”

Julie shakes her head, looking slightly confused.

“He’s not air anymore. Now he’s just cute.” Flynn cuts a look across to her best friend and delights as she sees a blush spreading over her cheeks.

“Aren’t… Aren’t you worried that he’s still a ghost? He’s dead. I’m not. In Luke’s own words we have an ‘interesting little relationship.’” Julie worried her lower lip as she comes to a halt on the garden path.

Flynn shrugged, “Yeah, but he makes you happy right?”

Julie’s smile beams again, “Yeah. They all do.”

“Then who gives a fuck? The way I see it, the universe threw you three pieces of eye candy. At first it was like a carrot and stick, and you could follow it around as much as you wanted, but that stick was always gonna keep the carrot too far away. But the universe itself just changed the rules and cut the string. Now you have the carrot in your hand. Why shouldn’t you fucking eat it?”

Julie licked her lips, smiling and nodding, “Yeah. Yeah, why shouldn’t I?”

Flynn clapped a hand on her back, “Hell yeah! Fucking get it girl!” Wrapping her arm fully around her bestie as she walked them the rest of the way up to the house.

* * *

It takes a little longer than Flynn expected for Julie to “fucking get it girl.” She’d hoped her liberating pep talk would result in Julie getting to at least first base by the end of the weekend. But it’s a week and a half later before Julie shoots her a picture text of a carrot. Flynn wants to respond with “about damn time,” but doesn’t want to discourage her friend’s progress. So instead she just replies with, “Fuck yeah girl!”

She learns the next day at school that the hesitancy had been on Luke’s side. He had also been worried about the whole “I’m dead, you’re alive” thing. But Julie apparently gave a more metaphorically apt pep talk than carrots which resulted in Luke and her making out in the studio when they were supposed to be songwriting.

The gossip quickly becomes boiling hot. Evidently, Luke’s love language was unarguably touch, and now that he could touch Julie, he just didn’t ever stop. Julie talks about how nice it is. Not just getting her batteries supercharged and leaving her wet and wanting, but there’s a gentle side to it too. The way he caresses her cheek so softly, like he’d break her if he pressed too hard. Or how he snuggles into her side when they’re watching a movie. Or how he gently holds her hand in his when they’re walking, or sitting, or literally anytime they’re within two feet of one another. Or, the one that felt the most meaningful, how he held her as she cried and finally, really talked to him about her mom. There’s a softness to her intimacy with the ghost boy.

But Julie also complains about the sexually charged part of their relationship as well. Because she doesn’t know why, but Luke won’t ever move anything passed heavy petting over clothes. And while Julie admits to her friend that she doesn’t feel ready to go all the way, she does want to do something more. She confesses the talent of his tongue, and explains exactly where she’d like that tongue to end up…

Flynn was more experienced than Julie with this sort of thing. She’d spent time before with both guys and girls. Flynn isn’t one to brag about her sexual conquests, and she’s never really been in the same kind of emotionally committed relationship as Julie is to Luke. Flynn was a girl who liked to have fun, there was nothing wrong with that. But she could understand Julie’s frustrations.

So before she left Julie’s place that evening, the two of them had gone online and ordered a couple of new toys for Julie to put in the shoebox she has hidden under her bed. Something fun to keep her sated while they waited for when (or if, but Flynn’s betting on when) Luke is ready to move things to the next level.

* * *

It’s about a month after their toy splurge when Julie calls a 9-1-1. Flynn asks if she wanted her to come over, but Julie denies her, asks which of her parents’ she’s at, and then says she’ll be at her mom’s in ten. When Julie arrives a few minutes later, she greets her mom with a few kind pleasantries before she’s dragging Flynn up to her room by the hand.

After pushing her back up against her door, disheveling the bi pride flag Flynn had hanging there, Julie bursts into a fit of nervous giggles.

“Jules. What the hell?” Flynn asked, hands on hips, “You called a 9-1-1. What the fuck is going on?”

Julie is trying to compose herself behind her laughter, “Okay,” she finally breathes out with a wheeze, “So you know how Luke and I have been having our thing?”

“You mean making out like horny teenagers?” Flynn questions, moving her hands from her hips to crossed at her chest, setting herself down on the edge of her bed. “I’m aware. Yes.”

“Okay, well I figured out why he was hesitant to move our relationship further. Or, rather, he told me.”

“Alright. Well you’re laughing and not sobbing,” Flynn says as she looks her best friend up and down, “So I hope that means everything’s okay. Doesn’t explain the 9-1-1.”

“I’m freaking out Flynn!” Julie exclaimed, tugging at her curls.

“About what? You haven’t told me anything!” she threw up her hands to emphasize the point.

“Yeah, okay. So…” Julie took a step forward and twirled, dramatically falling flat on her back on the bed next to Flynn, “Fuck. This is _insane._ ” Julie was a mess of giggles again as she threw an arm up over her eyes.

“Julie, fucking tell me, or so help me I will go to your house right now and eat your entire chocolate stash,” Flynn threatened, dropping on her back on the bed along with Julie.

Her friend rotated up on her side to face her, “You wouldn’t!” she gasped.

“I will if you don’t start using your words in the next ten seconds Molina!”

“Right. Okay,” she takes another breath, “So Luke’s been holding back in our relationship because he had a pretty big secret he needed to tell me. He didn’t feel comfortable getting too far ahead of ourselves before he’d told me everything. You, know. Just in case.”

Flynn raised an eyebrow. She didn’t know, mainly because Julie was taking until the heat death of the universe to tell her what exactly was going on. What secret could be bigger than “Hi! I’m a ghost who died twenty-five years ago. I live in a garage with my two other ghost buddies. I make music, and am in a band, and by the way, I also like to kiss my living human friend and bandmate!”?

“So it turns out he had, or kind of currently _has_ a thing with Alex and Reggie too.”

Flynn bolts upright, eyes wide as she stares down her friend. “Wait. Hold up. So Luke has been seeing the other guys too? Like, behind your back?”

Julie propped herself up on her hand, “No, not like that. He hasn’t done anything with them since we officially got together. But they were together before. Both when they were alive, and then after. Like when they were ghosts, right when they got here. Before we could touch.”

“Okay. So processing here.” Flynn points to the pride flag on the door, “So he’s bi too then?”

“We talked a little about it. When they told me about their relationship we talked about some of the pride stuff. Luke says he thinks he’s more pan, Reggie said he was bi, and then Alex is gay,” Julie explained, pulling herself up off the bed and counting off on her fingers as she went.

“Alright. But, like, if they’re together then they’re definitely poly, right? So is your boyfriend asking you to be exclusive, or move to an officially open status?” Flynn pressed, turning to face her friend to gauge her reaction.

Julie’s face split in a grin and she was back to giggling. Somewhere behind the laughter, Flynn could barely hear Julie as she corrected, “Boyfriends.”

Flynn tilted her head, not sure if she misheard, “Sorry what?”

Julie took a calming breath, “Boyfriends. As in plural. We’re pretty much all dating each other at this point.”

Flynn’s eyes went wide, “The actual fuck?!” Julie’s giggles have gotten the best of her and she’s once more fallen back against the bed. Flynn by contrast sitting ramrod straight staring at the door as she tried to process what her bestie had just revealed to her.

“I know right?! I kissed Reggie, Flynn. I kissed him! And it wasn’t the same as Luke, but it was still really nice. And then Luke kissed both of us. And… Flynn I just can’t!”

Julie laughed for a few more moments before she realized that Flynn wasn’t following suit. She sat up again, looking over at her friend.

“Flynn. Are you okay?” Julie’s face instantly pales, “Oh God. You think I made the wrong choice, don’t you?”

Flynn’s head snapped to her friend, “What? No, no of course not. I’m not gonna judge y’all for being poly or anything. If that’s what you want together, fucking go for it, you know? I’m just worried Jules. In a lot of ways. Dating three people at once would be tough under the best of circumstances. But the guys are _ghosts._ They come with a unique set of challenges that you’ll need to face. Are you sure you’re up for that? Times three?”

Julie takes a deep breath, contemplating her answer before looking Flynn in the eyes. “They brought me back to music Flynn. They came to me for a reason. Maybe it was to help me love again after I lost my mom. All I know is they make me happy. And I’d rather not look this particular gift horse in the mouth.”

Flynn nodded her understanding, a broad grin finally spreading across her features. “Okay, so you said you made out with Reggie?” Julie smirked, biting her lip and nodding. “And then Luke made out with both of you?” The smile broadened, and the nod became more frantic. “Okay. Dish.”

The two spent the rest of the afternoon talking about Julie’s newfound relationship status. Not just about what had happened, but what was in their sights for the future.

* * *

“Do I look different? I feel like I look different.” Julie commented as she tugged at her hair, and then her shirt, and then her backpack strap.

The two were standing in front of Flynn’s locker; her putting her belongings away as Julie rambled. It was Monday morning, and Julie had already told her on the phone over the weekend what had happened. Julie and Luke had had sex for the first time on Friday night. So of course, her bestie was still freaking out about it days later.

Flynn closed her locker door with force to snap Julie out of her reverie.

“You don’t look different Jules. No one is going to be able to tell.”

Julie bit her lip, “But, like... I don’t know. I feel like I have a big neon sign on my back screaming,” she darts her eyes around to ensure no one is in listening range, then leans in to whisper, “Breaking News. Not a virgin anymore!”

Flynn rolled her eyes, “Okay. First off, virginity is a bullshit patriarchal construct perpetuated to demean and subjugate women. You haven’t ‘lost’ your virginity, you’ve gained a sexual experience. And secondly, because it’s fucking made up, you can’t detect it with some kind of ‘virgin alarm.’ Okay? You know, I know, and your boys know. Anyone else you tell is entirely up to you. You have full control over news about your body and your sex life, okay?”

Julie nods, “Yeah, yeah. You’re right.”

Flynn scoffed, “Damn straight.”

“You’re nowhere near straight,” Julie laughed as the two made their way through the hall to her own locker.

Flynn can tell something is up as soon as they’re within eyeshot down the hallway. The bright smile on Julie’s face broadens even wider and her eyes get all gooey and soft. Flynn looks down at the locker, and sees absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. So it’s one or more of the guys. Of course it is.

Once they hit the locker, Julie is glancing around the hall and pulling out her phone to place against her ear. “What are you doing here?” Julie lets out a light lilt, before she turns to Flynn. “It’s Luke and Reggie. They said they missed me.”

“Didn’t you just leave home, like, half an hour ago?” Flynn questioned with a snort.

“Well yeah, but I think it’s sweet.” She giggled again as she moved to open her locker with her free hand.

“God. You are all so whipped.” Flynn commented, as her shoulder landed against the bank of lockers.

Once her locker is opened, Julie’s free hand is pulling off to the side rather than reaching in. And by the way she’s looking at her arm and giggling, Flynn can perfectly imagine the kisses, soft as a butterfly wing’s caress, that one or both of the boys is dancing up her friend’s arm.

“Stop it,” she giggles into her phone, “I have to get my stuff for class… No. I can’t. School first, you know that!” Julie gasps and then pulls her free arm back slightly, before swatting out at the air. “Luke!” she admonished playfully, before her head is spinning and her eyes go impossibly wide as she looks in the other direction. “Reggie!”

Julie continues to swat the ghosts away as she sorts her books and binders out of her backpack and into her locker, keeping out what she needed for her classes before lunch. A curl of Julie’s has moved on its own, exposing the free ear not covered by the phone. A faint movement of air has the tendrils of her hair dancing around the shell of her ear. Julie’s free hand is gripping the door to the locker, knuckles turning almost white. Her cheeks have flushed pink, and Flynn can tell her breathing has picked up.

With a hitched breath and a gasp, Julie slams her locker door shut. Or maybe it closed on its own? It’s honestly hard to tell, given how slack her free hand fell after the door shut under her grasp. Julie’s breathing has labored as she looks up, pressing her phone to her ear a little too tightly. “N-no. I told you I-I can’t. I ha–” a deep breath, “I have class.”

Julie is turning, but Flynn isn’t sure if it’s of her own volition, or if she’s being directed by one of the guys. Part of her thinks it would be best to get the hell out of dodge. It’s weird to see her bestie’s one-sided foreplay. On the other hand, it’s also freaking hilarious to see Julie turning to complete putty in the middle of the hallway. She has no idea what the guys are saying to her, but she can guess. And yeah, fucking get it girl! If Julie wasn’t insisting on the “school first” thing, Flynn would butt in and suggest they make their way to the nearest janitor’s closet.

Julie’s back is now firmly pressed against the bank of lockers. The collar of her shirt is pulling down slightly. Flynn imagines there’s lips trailing up her neck right now. Julie swallows thickly, and her eyes glance to the side, making contact with Flynn. Who’s leaning on her side against a locker, watching her friend with quirked eyebrows and a teasing smirk. Flynn gauges the look. Was this a “help me find a way to fuck these boys right this minute” look? Or was this a “dear God, I need an accountabilibuddy to help me keep my pants on” look?

There’s worry behind her eyes. Part of Julie still seeing that neon sign above her head. Concern about what the world would think of her for being a sexually liberated teenager. She’d grow more comfortable in time, and her boys would help her with that. Would help her to learn what she liked, and to ask for it (or take it, because she was a queen and she could totally fucking take it). But right now, just three days after she and Luke had first dabbled, she was still new. And this kind of forward move from the guys, while hot as fuck, was too much too soon. Maybe a few months down the line Julie would be less shy at the thought of having her invisible ghosts go down on her in a semi-public place.

However, in this instance, the look in her eyes was pleading with Flynn for help. So Flynn reached over, plucking the phone from her bestie’s now slack hand.

Holding the device to her ear to keep up the charade; she swatted her hand in the air in front of Julie. “Okay boys. That’s enough. You heard the woman. We’ve got to get to first period.” Flynn must have hit someone, because a cold tingle buzzes up her arm.

Julie relaxed slightly, and her shirt collar moved to replace itself, curls falling naturally once again. She looked at Flynn with thanks and relief in her eyes. Flynn grabbing up her friend’s backpack, and pulling her away from the lockers. Pushing against her shoulder with her elbow to nudge her down the hallway.

“You can all return to this conversation _after_ school,” Flynn shot a wink to where she assumed the boys were still standing, “I’m sure Julie would like that, wouldn’t you Jules?”

Her friend looked back toward the lockers, shaking her head to clear the fog. Then, presumably making eye contact with the boys, her smile beamed again.

“Yeah, after school sounds great.”

“Awesome. Let’s go,” Flynn dropped the phone back in Julie’s hand as she steered her down the hallway toward their first class.

At lunch, the two grabbed a seat out in a secluded area of the bleachers outside. Once alone, Flynn got all the gossip about exactly how _descriptive_ the guys had been during their visit this morning. Julie flushing and having an issue with breathing just in recounting it.

When Julie gets off the bus two stops earlier than her after school, Flynn winks at her as she wishes her a good time at band practice.

* * *

They really needed to devise a new emergency text alert system. Because Julie keeps using 9-1-1’s to draw Flynn into her relationship drama in a way which is definitely an abuse of the code. 9-1-1 should be reserved for _actual_ emergencies, not for when Julie is having an existential crisis about her boyfriends. Given the group’s unique arrangement, maybe their new code for “poly-ship” drama should be 6-9-6-9? Flynn chuckles at the joke in her head, causing her friend to slow her pacing in front of the door of her closet.

Julie turns to Flynn sitting on the bed, her hands on her hips and her face a picture of exasperation. “What? I’m serious. This is a big problem!”

Flynn rolled her eyes, “I guarantee it’s not as big a deal as you’re making it.”

Julie’s face pales as she looks down her friend, “It is! Alex had a panic attack! We were both freaking out!” Julie begins pacing again, “What’s going to happen now? He can’t even look at me without a shirt. And that’s just a shirt! I still had everything else on! What is this going to mean for all of us. Together?” Her voice is small and scared, so Flynn sighs and pats the bed beside her. Once Julie is seated next to her, she begins rubbing soothing circles into her back.

“You didn’t ask him to do anything with you, right? Because I assume you weren’t pressuring him into something.”

“No! Of course not! I wouldn’t do that. He’s gay. He’s not interested in me like that. It was just…” she takes a deep breath and looks up to the ceiling, “Things were getting heated with me and Luke. And Reggie and Alex were over on the couch. And Reggie was getting so excited too. And I think Alex was getting swept up in the heat of the moment. But when Luke finally got my top off… I don’t know. He just turned into a deer in headlights and freaked out. And then I felt like shit, because I should have known it would make him uncomfortable.”

“Okay. Have you ever sat down and spoken to Alex? _Really_ spoken to him about what you’re both comfortable with?”

“No, not really I guess. Every time we’ve talked it has been as a group. And he said he was okay with me joining their relationship. But now I’m not sure. I’m worried he hates me for hogging the guys. He can’t even look at me Flynn! How are we ever supposed to make this work if he won’t even fucking _look_ at me?” Julie goes rigid under Flynn’s hands, her head whipping around a moment later to look at the window. “Alex,” she whispered under her breath. 

Well. Now things would get interesting. Flynn should have brought popcorn. Julie spins her head as if tracking the ghost from the other side of the room, around the bottom of the bed, and then to right in front of them both. After a still moment, Julie nods and the comforter shifts slightly on her right side. It’s weird to Flynn the ways in which the ghosts can impact the world. The blanket definitely moves as if someone had just sat, but the bed doesn’t dip. As though the person there weighs absolutely nothing at all. (Flynn suddenly wonders if the guys feel heavy when they’re pressed against Julie…)

After another few beats of silence, Julie is speaking again, voice soft and unsure, “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have done something that would make you uncomfortable…” she laughs in a huff, “You thought _you_ made _me_ uncomfortable? Seriously?... Well yeah, the panic attack did kill the mood, but that wasn’t your fault… How _isn’t_ it my fault? It’s clearly my fault.”

Flynn made an exasperated noise at the half-conversation. This whole thing was going to be a disaster if she didn’t force an intervention immediately. Alex and Julie were both too anxiety riddled to know how to reasonably clean up their own mess.

“Alright,” she declared, slapping her lap and standing, “You both need to have an actual conversation about what you are and are not comfortable doing in your relationship. Now you can have that talk without me, but something tells me you’re both just going to keep circling the drain in a panic and not actually solve anything.”

She walks across the room, and picks up Julie’s acoustic guitar that’s leaning against the wall by the closet. Rose’s old guitar. She knows Julie doesn’t really play, but she knows enough of the basics to get the magic flowing. “If you’re comfortable, then I’m happy to stay here and help mediate your negotiation session.” Turning back to the bed, she holds the guitar out to her bestie. “But if I’m staying I need to be able to hear both sides of this.”

Julie looks to Alex again, and then, as if receiving a confirmation, she reached out for the proffered guitar. As Julie tuned the instrument, Flynn stepped over to her desk. She grabbed a notebook and a couple of pens, threw them in Julie’s desk chair, and then wheeled it over in front of Julie on the bed. Picking up the notebook, Flynn flopped into the chair just as Julie was finishing her tuning.

“Okay… yeah, that would probably work,” she said in Alex’s direction before she started to idly strum meaningless chords. Nothing really sophisticated, but it seems as though it’s enough. A moment later, Flynn hears the sound of tapping, and then Alex snaps into view. He’s drumming out a rhythm to match Julie’s playing with two fingers on the body of the guitar.

“That’s better,” Flynn declared as soon as the blonde was visible. “Hi Alex.”

“Hey Flynn,” he smiled up at her awkwardly. Julie also shot her a tight-lipped smile. The next few minutes were going to be like pulling teeth, weren’t they?

“Alright, Guys, Gals, and Enby Pals. The doctor is in!” Alex scrunched his nose at her use of the greeting, probably not familiar with the word. But she did not have the time right now to get into the LGBTQ+ terminology. They could do the dictionary overview another day.

“I’ve got a notepad in case we want to take any notes. Or if you wanted to have anything official about this negotiation put down in writing.”

Alex scoffed, “Negotiation? You’re making it sound like I’m holding Julie hostage.”

Flynn rolled her eyes, “Polyamory negotiations. It’s pretty common in the community. When you’re seeing multiple people, it’s good to hash out exactly what each person is comfortable with. Honestly, it’s something that should become more commonplace in relationships in general in my opinion. It’s always good to know the go’s and no-go’s so you make sure each person is respected and has their needs met.

“And obviously anything in writing is just to make sure we’re on the same page. It’s not like this shit’s going to be notarized or anything. But communication is good. Today’s going to be about setting some base lines. Totally open to revision at a later date as circumstances change. You may find that things you said you were okay with initially, you don’t actually like in the moment. Or that you’re more open to things you initially eighty-sixed after you’re more accustomed to one another. This is all about comfort and consent. Make sense?”

Both Julie and Alex nod tentatively. They’re just barely clinging onto what could be called a melody, but as long as it keeps Alex visible it doesn’t super matter that it sounds a bit of a mess. Frankly, it’s sort of the musical projection of how the pair look. Tentative, hesitant, no sense of direction, basically all over the place.

“Ummm,” Alex mumbles a moment later, “So, like, what exactly are we planning on talking about here? Like, how _detailed_ were we planning to get?”

“Consent and comfort Alex. As detailed as you’re comfortable with. And if you’re not, you say.” Flynn asserted, possibly a little tersely, but they needed to get on with it. Not that she had anywhere to go, but she wasn’t kidding when she joked to herself that this drama needed popcorn.

“Well, so… Flynn and I have always been pretty candid about our sex lives, so I trust her.” Julie adds in timidly.

Alex shoots her a side-eye, “Like, _graphically_ candid? You just casually talk about… about _that_ with your best friend?”

“Oh please,” Flynn teased, “You and _your_ best friends are all up in here giving each other orgasms. How does us _talking_ about our sex lives throw you off?”

Alex’s lips purse and his face goes pale at her candor, “I… That’s… Okay. Fair point.”

“And an excellent segue. Go me. So, how do you feel about orgasms?” Flynn asks leaning forward on her knees. Alex freezes up instantly, and a moment later he vanishes from view.

“Alex,” Julie says softly, letting the guitar fall limp around her shoulders. She reached out to the side, seeming to grab his hand. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about this, no one is making you. But I think I’m seeing Flynn’s point.”

(“Thank you,” Flynn thinks at the praise.)

“If we’re not even able to _talk_ about this sort of stuff, then how can we _do_ any of it? I really don’t want another incident like today…” there’s a long pause, and Flynn breathes patiently as she waits. “No, I mean you shouldn’t ever feel like you’re in a position where you feel scared. We should feel safe together. But I can’t help you feel safe if I don’t know where your boundaries are. Okay?”

A few more moments pass, and then Julie is readjusting the guitar to resume playing. Before she starts she looks back to Flynn, “Maybe we can approach this with some more delicate baby steps?”

Flynn throws her arms in the air dramatically with a huffed sigh, but when she’s looking back at the pair her smile is bright and teasing, “Throw me off my game Molina.” Julie rolls her eyes and resumes her playing, moments later Alex is once more visible on the bed.

“Okay. So easy mode question number one. Alex, are you comfortable being sexually intimate with Julie?” Flynn asked, looking intently at the drummer.

“That’s the easy mode question?” he asked, his voice edging up in pitch.

“Yes, like, literally the whole rest of the conversation hinges on knowing the answer.”

Alex turned to Julie, taking in her features as though really contemplating his answer. With a resigned sigh he turns back to Flynn. “I love Julie. I really do. But I’m not attracted to her. Actually, girls are almost a turn off. Like, I think…” he hesitates, breathing deeply for a moment as his eyes drift to the ceiling, “I think that was why I sort of overly freaked out today. When I was starting to get…” he swallowed thickly, “To get excited… Seeing Julie there just put my brain in panic mode cause it was like ‘Girl! Bad!’”

“Do you know where that discomfort comes from?” Flynn questioned.

Alex gritted his teeth, “Let’s just say that my dad thought locking me in a room with a hooker would somehow cure my homosexuality and leave it at that.”

“Oh Alex,” Julie said, looking to the boy with sympathy.

“Well that’s all sorts of fucked up,” Flynn whistled.

Alex took a breath, and then looked to Flynn, a cheeky grin spreading on his face, “Didn’t fucking stick though.”

Flynn brought her hand up for a fist bump, “Hell yeah! Fuck homophobia.” Alex laughed throatily and tapped his knuckles in the air next to Flynn’s hand.

“Fuck homophobia,” he agreed with a curt nod, before sighing and continuing, “So, anyway. Trauma aside. I think that being, ummm, intimate is just a really vulnerable place for me. And there are very few people who I’ve ever felt safe with in that way.”

“Alex,” Julie spoke up softly, “You know I would never force you to do anything you were uncomfortable with right? You know I want you to feel safe, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I get that Julie. I think I just need a little bit more time to get my anxiety on board with that. In the grand scheme of things, you are one of the people I feel safest around. It’s part of the reason I am willing to endure the most awkward conversation of my life to make this work.” Alex cut an annoyed glance to Flynn.

“Happy to help!” she chirped brightly, shooting him a thumbs up.

“Why does that somehow make it worse?” Alex lamented, raking a hand across his face, “So to answer the question, no. I am not comfortable being sexually intimate with Julie.”

Flynn jotted a note about his answer before pointing the pen to Julie, “Alright, same question.”

Julie contemplated for a minute, “Well, I think I would be uncomfortable because Alex is uncomfortable. I’d never want him to feel unsafe, or like I was pressuring him. Intellectually speaking, I think he’s attractive, not gonna deny it. But if he doesn’t want it, then I don’t want it either.”

Alex perked up at the comment. “You think I’m attractive? Cuter than Luke or Reggie?” he raised his eyebrows.

“Stop. I’m not comparing you. That’s not allowed.” Julie pokes her chin out to Flynn, since she can’t actually point with her hands on the guitar. “Can that be a rule? No comparing partners?

Flynn jotted it down, “Done. Okay, next question. Since you’re not comfortable being sexual together, do you want to layout ground rules for Alex/Reggie/Luke and Julie/Reggie/Luke separately? Like, plans for a Luke/Reggie timeshare?”

Alex surprises Flynn when he speaks up, “Is it weird that I hate that idea? Like, even though I don’t want to have sex with Julie, splitting us all up doesn’t feel right.” He turns to Julie. “Does that make sense? Am I being crazy here?”

Julie shakes her head, “No, no you’re not crazy. I totally get it. Like, we’re a unit. All four of us. Ever since we could touch it’s like we’re connected. And I think that’s bigger than just sex.”

“Yeah, exactly. Like, drop the lead vocals or the drums and the song just doesn’t sound right anymore.” Julie nods enthusiastically at the metaphor.

Flynn adds the explanation to her running list, “So, no direct sexy times between you two, but just to fully clarify, you’re both okay being with Luke and Reggie at the same time? All four of you together?” When Alex and Julie both nod, Flynn clicks her tongue, “Consent needs to be verbal friends,” she reminds them.

“Yes,” Julie says aloud, “I’m good with the four of us all being together at the same time.”

“I’m going to be okay with it. I’m already feeling better than I was an hour ago. Now that we’ve talked. I think if we just maybe went slow the first few times. Let me get used to, ummm, Julie just being there in the room, then I’ll be okay.”

Flynn picked up on the end of his comment, “So, you don’t want to have sex with Julie, but are you okay with voyeurism? Like are you okay if she’s there and watching you with Luke or Reggie? And vis versa. Are you okay with watching Luke and Reggie being with Julie?”

Alex chuckled dryly, “I think I need to be just based on math.” He slowed his tapping on the guitar as he thought through his answer. It surprised Flynn how the music Julie and Alex were making to keep him visible had started to shift. Both growing a little surer of the melody and their movements. But the song was still soft, and low; not interfering with the conversation.

“I think, knowing we’re sharing two of our partners, and knowing we’re not comparing,” he joked, nudging Julie with his shoulder, “I would want them to not feel like they’re choosing sides. I don’t know that I would really _want_ to watch Julie. I mean I’ve seen porn, and not to say that you’re anything like a porn star Julie… I just… ummm. I’ve never been turned on by the women. So I don’t think I’d like watching Julie from, ummm, what was it you said?”

“Voyeurism.” Flynn offered.

“Yeah, voyeurism. Like, watching Julie wouldn’t do anything for me. But I know she thinks I’m hot,” at that Julie elbowed him, “Owww. How are your elbows so bony?” he asked, pulling one hand from his drumming to rub his side. Julie stuck out her tongue at him affectionately. Alex rolled his eyes, chuckling softly, “So if she was watching me with one of the other guys, I can see how that might affect her more. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong here.”

Julie gulped lightly, “No, ummm. Seeing Reggie and Luke together is very, ummm, stimulating for me. So I think I would like seeing them with you too.”

“Yeah. Believe me, the two of them together winds me up too,” he shot her a look that had Julie’s cheeks flushing, “So watching, I get. But ummm. I think I would be uncomfortable if you were to… how do I put this delicately?”

“We’re talking about foursomes and consent negotiations here Alex. Don’t worry about being delicate, be accurate,” Flynn admonished lightly. 

Alex licked his lips, “Right. Okay. So Julie can watch me, but I wouldn’t be comfortable if she were to… ummm… you know… while…”

At his hesitation, Flynn interrupted playfully, “Orgasm? Come? Get-off? Climax? Reach the crest of sexual ecstasy?”

“God Flynn! Any of them! You got the point. I’m already dead, you don’t need to try to kill me again!”

“Oh!” Flynn said with a teasing smirk, “Did you know that back in the middle ages orgasms were referred to as ‘the little death?’ La petite mort.”

Alex buried his face in one hand, “Dear God. Why do you know that?”

“I like to consider myself a sexually liberated twenty-first century woman,” Flynn grinned broadly.

“Enough Flynn.” Julie cut in, “So, just to make sure I understand. Alex is okay if I’m watching him with Luke or Reggie, and is understanding if that… gets me excited. But he would not want me to get off from watching him. Does that sum it up Alex?” Julie clarified calmly.

Alex took a deep breath, “Yes. That is what I was trying to say. Before _someone_ insisted on teasing me incessantly…”

Flynn laughs at his discomfort. “You’re doing great Alex. I know it’s not an easy conversation, but I hope that by having it we can avoid any future panic attacks.”

“Unless you give me one right now…” Alex muttered.

“See, I already know you’re more comfortable with me about this because you’re getting all sarcastic.” Flynn wiggled her eyebrows and Alex just glared at her. She then did a little head bobble dance with her shoulders to mix it up. He finally relaxed, releasing the tension, and let out something resembling a laugh. Julie herself was having trouble keeping up her playing as she giggled.

It was a good sign that they were loosening up. It had taken some teasing and some pointed questions, but they finally looked like they were relaxing and growing comfortable with one another. It’s a promising sign to Flynn that they would be okay. Just like she’d tried to tell Julie earlier before Alex had joined them. This moment was not the relationship ending disaster that they had decided it would be. It was a hurdle, a complication in their unique arrangement. But once they got passed it, their love would only grow stronger.

They spent another thirty minutes or so working out some other details of their arrangement. Flynn had taken some notes of the main points of their discussion, but in the end Alex and Julie decided a verbal agreement based on their conversation was sufficient and declined writing out anything formally.

As they wrapped up, Julie said, “Thanks Flynn. We really appreciated your guidance on this.”

“Maybe you did. I hated every minute of this…” Alex muttered, then laughed dryly, “But seriously. Thanks Flynn. We would have been a mess if we tried to do this on our own.”

Flynn stood from Julie’s desk chair, raising her arms to stretch out. “You’re welcome. I’m glad my torture was helpful. I hope your next attempt at an orgy goes over better. I fully expect to hear all of the hot gossip on it.”

Alex’s face goes completely beet red in the instant before he stops drumming on the guitar (Finally. It had been over an hour. What a pain in the ass way to communicate. Flynn guessed it just showed how dedicated he really was to making things work with Julie…) and in a blink he vanishes from view.

Julie is dropping the guitar to the bed; stretching her hands and shaking them out (and yeah, Flynn thought, Julie was just as invested in making this work as he was). Then in another moment she’s being swept up and wrapping her arms around the air in front of her.

“Of course. I was happy to do it… Yeah. I agree… Are you sure? I told you we were candid about our sex lives. I could just tell her anyway,” Julie cuts a look to Flynn, her eyes dancing mischievously. “I won’t. I promise. Today was all about building trust. Okay. That sounds good… They knew you were coming in here before right?... Good. They’re probably worried then. Go put them at ease for me? I can meet you out there later… Yeah.”

Julie popped up on her toes and lightly kissed the air in front of her. From the placement and angle, Flynn is guessing a kiss on the cheek. One of the kisses approved in their verbal contract. “I love you Alex.” From her beaming smile, Flynn can imagine exactly what the boy said back.

As her bestie is turning back to her, Flynn pipes in, “So now that that 9-1-1 crisis is averted, can we go down and make some popcorn please? I’m starving!”

* * *

Julie giggles the next day at school as she recounts exactly how their conversation went once she joined Alex in the studio after their negotiation session. She had brought out the notes Flynn had taken. She beams with pride as she shares how calm and composed Alex was in rehashing the agreement to the guys.

“You can tell he trusts them, it’s really sweet.” And then Julie giggles, and her eyes glint a little with _something_ , “But he’s also kind of commanding with them. And they just listen and do exactly as their told. It’s actually pretty fucking hot.”

The group apparently decided to try building up Alex’s boundaries that night. Nothing too drastic, just barely pushing against the edge of comfort. It was pretty innocuous, all things considered, given everything they had talked about earlier in the day. Shirtless band rehearsal. The comforting familiarity of music to help ease the tension. Julie had kept her bra on, not ready to push that point just yet. Functionally speaking, it had the same situational weight as a day at the beach. By the end of the night, Julie says with delight, Alex finally relaxed enough that he wasn’t on the verge of breaking his sticks from a death grip.

And Julie _may_ have pushed just a little bit when she came up behind him on the drum stool when Luke and Reggie were singing together; whispering about how hot the two looked. But he didn’t freak out this time. Only turned to her and offered his own suggestion about what the two guitarists could be doing instead. (Flynn groaned as she realized she would never again be able to watch Luke and Reggie singing together with a straight face. At this point, she was hearing the suggestion second hand. But yeah, Flynn now couldn’t shake the comparison of the boy’s shared mic to a _certain_ part of Alex’s anatomy).

Julie is pleased to report that at the end of the night, she and Alex had hugged as she was leaving the studio. And neither had put their shirts on yet. Alex was a bit stiff and uncomfortable, but given that he had been the one to initiate the hug, Julie was over the moon. He’d even kissed the top of her head as he held her close, thanking her for her patience and understanding. And if Julie’s eyes are a little moist as she recalls how special that kiss made her feel, then who is Flynn to judge?

“You are a life saver and the best friend I could ever ask for. Thank you for coming in and pulling the two of us out of our own asses,” Julie chuckled as she crushed Flynn into a tight hug. “Seriously, what would I do without you?”

Flynn snorted, “Probably spending a hell of a lot more time with your vibrator.”

* * *

It’s another month before Julie is calling her on a Sunday afternoon to gush about the group’s first successful night together. It had taken some trust-building, but they were all at the point where they could be together and spend more time enjoying themselves than panicking.

It had sounded like a disaster, like none of them was really out of their own heads enough to be coordinated or elegant. But Julie beamed with happiness regardless. Their perfect imperfections enamoring her further to the guys.

Flynn hung up the phone with a chortle once the whole story was disclosed (and she definitely did not overhear one-sided whispers on the other end of the line that seemed to indicate a repeat performance was in order...) With a sigh, Flynn unabashedly texted Lauren, the cute girl she’d been flirting with. If her best friend was getting it so good, why the hell shouldn’t she?

* * *

Julie was supposed to meet her forty minutes ago. After her fifth call to voicemail and dozens of unreturned texts, Flynn is starting to get worried. Downing the rest of her now cold coffee, Flynn grabs her purse and dashes out of the café. Her planned meeting to discuss the latest gigs she had booked and to go over the boys’ online profiles one more time before they released their official handles on the JatP socials falling to the wayside. She tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for the Uber driver and only feels a little guilty when she snaps at the college aged girl in the front of the car to hurry.

Dashing down the driveway once she gets to the Molina’s she finds herself worrying more at the lack of music coming from the studio. She’d been hoping Julie had just gotten caught up at band rehearsal and forgot about their meeting. But, even though they hadn’t heard a peep about the bastard in months (Willie had reassured them that Caleb wouldn’t bother them anymore. He’d apparently received some sort of cosmic punishment for breaking an ethical code in his attack on the guys), she still finds her brain spiraling that something terrible could have happened to them. It was totally unlike Julie to completely ghost her.

Though it’s not until she’s throwing open the door to the studio that she realizes that Julie “ghosting” no longer has the same connotation.

“For fuck’s sake! Guys!” Flynn cries, as she backs out of the studio, throwing her hands over her face. “Like, lock the door, or put a sock on the handle or fucking something!”

The look on her best friend’s face is permanently seared into her mind. Utter blissed out pleasure as she floated, _fucking floated,_ over the couch’s pull out bed. She was bare ass naked, and Flynn was sure she had seen in her brief glimpse several hickies blooming on her skin. One or more of her guys had to have been holding her up. And by the look of how her legs had been wrapped around the air in front of her, Flynn was fairly certain someone had been _inside_ of her too.

God, if she thought seeing Julie kiss air was weird, this made her feel certifiably insane. It was one thing to gossip about the band’s sexual misadventures. At least then, Flynn could imagine the boys as Julie described them. Could picture them as normal, human looking people. But seeing, actually _seeing_ Julie fucking the air was just a reminder to Flynn about how freakishly bizarre her best friend’s sex life was.

But on the other hand… fucking get it girl!

Julie had shrieked out her name when Flynn walked in, and there was a fair bit of clattering and shuffling and one-sided snippets of conversation that Flynn could hear behind the door. After a couple tense and awkward minutes where Flynn was trying to think of anything (fuck, _literally anything_ …) to replace the image burned into her retinas, Julie is tentatively opening the door to the studio. She’s wearing one of Luke’s cut-offs, and Flynn is quick to note, virtually nothing else.

“Flynn?” she called out cautiously, “Are you still here?”

Flynn pops off the wall where she’d been leaning, “Yeah, I’m here.”

“Okay, ummm,” Julie’s eyes flit back into the studio, “Did you want to come in?”

Flynn’s eyes dart passed Julie’s shoulder into the garage. Taking in the bizarre scene of the couch pull-out folding itself up, and Reggie’s leather jacket being slung over what she assumes are his shoulders before the fabric vanishes in the air a moment later like it had never been there in the first place. “Are they okay with that?”

“Yeah, ummm.” She pauses for a moment, looking back over her shoulder again and nodding, “It would probably be best if we talked this through. I don’t want this hanging over our heads. So can we just, ummm, can we just talk please?”

Flynn steps into the room and immediately makes for the overstuffed, white armchair. Glancing up at where the couch cushions are now floating back into place of their own accord, she laughs out, “I am never sitting on that couch ever again.” Julie looks at her a little guiltily. At first she thinks it’s about what she’d just walked in on, but then Flynn catches how Julie is looking, with way too much attention, at the very chair she’s sitting in.

Flynn darts her eyes from the chair to her friend, “Please tell me there’s at least _some_ surface in this studio that’s safe to touch.” At the lack of an answer, Flynn groans, “Okay. I am buying you a gallon of bleach after this.”

* * *

After the “incident”, Flynn gifts the band with a padlock. Reggie opens the package she holds up one handed, allowing him to keep plucking away strings at odd intervals to keep him visible. His face a picture of glee, only to look up at her in confusion once he pulls out the tissue.

“For the door,” she clarifies. And the rest of the band groans.

* * *

Rose’s birthday is today, and Flynn knew from last year how hard it was for Julie to get through. So it’s with ice cream pint in hand that she knocks on Julie’s door. She doesn’t hear a reply, but when she tests the nob, she finds it unlocked (Thank God).

Tucking her head around the door, Flynn takes a look at the picture on the bed, and has a much different reaction than the last time she’d walked in on them. Still, she’s glad it’s her who’s walked into the room to find them this way and not Ray.

“How long has she been asleep?” she whispers into the room as she turns to slowly close the door behind her. A notepad floats across from the desk, a pen dancing on the page as it moves.

_“Maybe 20 minutes. She had a good cry and passed out.”_ Flynn reads once the notepad has been turned around in front of her face. The script is curling and definitely legible, so it’s probably Alex.

Flynn nods, “Are you all here?” The pen scratches across the paper again, as a new message is written out beneath the first.

_“Yeah, we’re all here.”_

Flynn smiles at her friend on the bed. For some reason it’s no longer weird to see her like this. Julie is floating over the mattress. Flynn can imagine the space between is filled with Luke, curled tightly around her. Her head is tucked into him securely, and she can make out the way her curls are pressing down as if someone were carding fingers through her hair. Her hand is wrapped up off to the other side, as though pressed against Reggie, him cradling her arm to his chest like a precious treasure. He was always the one calling Julie their angel.

“Okay, well I’m going to let her sleep then, since it looks like you’ve got this. When she wakes up, if she wants it, I’ve got ice cream.” She lifts the pint in her hand, “I’m gonna go pop this in the freezer and then check on Ray and Carlos. And Alex?” she waits, but she’s not sure why; she has no doubt he’s listening even if she can’t see him to confirm.

“Might be good to throw a blanket on her so it doesn’t look like she’s levitating,” Flynn chuckled, but her smile faded to one of fondness as she glanced back over her shoulder. The blanket at the end of Julie’s bed rose, unfolded itself, and then, ever so gently and tenderly, it draped over the form of her sleeping friend.

“Thanks for taking care of her guys,” Flynn spoke softly as she stepped out into the hall.

Yeah, at first Flynn had been wary of the ghost boys. She had discouraged Julie from liking Luke. She’d pushed her toward Nick, (and in hindsight, Mr. TotallyVanilla would never have done it for her friend). She’d changed her tune when the rules changed, but she had still been worried. She had been concerned of the complications, especially when multiplied three-fold. It was her job to look out for her friend.

But stepping into her room, on what she knew would be one of the worst days for Julie, she realized that she no longer had to be the only one looking out for her. Julie had three amazing boys who all loved her more than anything. Loved her enough to flip-off death in the face and shout “fuck you!” to a universe that was against them. Loved her enough to hold her up as the absolute fucking star she was, but also to support her at her most vulnerable.

And that kind of full, and complete love. That all-encompassing happiness was all Flynn wanted for her friend. She fucking deserved it. (And the mind-blowing foursomes definitely didn’t hurt either…)


	2. Carlos

Carlos checked the window again. The lights were still on in the studio. It had been, like, twenty minutes. Where was she? He walks back over to his dresser, once more picking up the pink dahlia he had set there. The one Julie had given him after they got home from the show. Before they’d left he had overheard her talking to one of the ghosts to thank her mother. How was Mamá connected to Julie’s ghost band? Carlos had so many questions, and only one way to know the answers.

He circled back to the window. Lights still on. Dang it. How long did she need to talk to them? This was starting to get ridiculous. Maybe, if he’s quiet enough, he could sneak passed his dad and make his way out there…

Just as he’s contemplating the most effective escape route, he hears a soft knock at his door. Jumping from the bed, Carlos races to the door, throwing it open with a flourish. Julie is standing there, blinking rapidly and looking surprised.

“Freaking finally!” Carlos cried as he reached for his sister’s hand and dragged her through the door. Once inside he shuts it firmly behind them both.

Julie stands about in the space between the door and the bed, uncomfortably fidgeting with her hands. “So, what was it you wanted to talk about?”

Carlos put his hands on his hips and looked up to his sister incredulously, “Really? This is how you want to roll?”

Julie shoots him a very fake looking smile, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Uh huh,” Carlos said flatly, “I guess if that’s really how you want to do this…” he trailed off as he walked over to the dresser. Pulling open the top drawer, Carlos rooted around through his loose socks to find what he was looking for. (He knew his Mamá would be annoyed that he never bothered putting them into pairs, but honestly, what was the point? They all looked the same anyway…)

After a moment, he pulls out the CD case from its hiding place. Turning around to his sister, he held it out to her, “Maybe this will change your tune.” A smug grin shot across his features at his sister’s expression of disbelief. He crossed his arms, pleased with himself. (Talk your way out of this one Julie!)

She flips the case over as if studying it, before she breathes out a sigh, “They’re not happy you called them ‘Boy Band’ by the way.”

Carlos is jumping in the air before the confirmation is even passed her lips. “Yes! Yes! I freaking _knew_ it!”

Julie is shushing him just as quickly, and he stills his celebration. “Quiet Carlos! Dad!” The way she hisses the word has him quieting instantly.

“Oh, yeah,” his eyes dart to the door, “He would so _freak_ at this!”

“Yes he would. Which is why this is going to be our little secret, right?”

“But –” he begins, before he’s cut off.

“Promise me, or else I leave right now and don’t tell you anything.” Carlos scowls, but there’s no way he’s calling her bluff on this one. He knew how stubborn his sister was. He still remembers the time when she’d hidden his I-pad for a week until he agreed to switch dish duty with her. She could be brutal. So after a moment he huffs out a sigh and offers out his pinky finger. She nods resolutely as she interlinks their digits.

Julie turns on her heels the moment they separate and goes to the light switch on the wall. She blinks it on and off a few times, which has him tilting his head in confusion.

“Ummm. I kind of know that the ghosts are real at this point. I’m not sure you’re really going to spook me with that,” he points out after a moment.

“Okay. Well I guess that answers that,” she declares, turning over her left shoulder.

“What answers what? What are you talking abo–” but the rest of his thought is cut off as the CD case in Julie’s hand is moving to float next to her in the middle of the room. Carlos’ eyes bug out wide before his face is splitting in a Cheshire grin and he’s back to bouncing, “I knew it! I knew it!” he starts, but a glare from Julie has him shifting to a whisper, “I knew it!”

“Yeah, well I assume he found it out in the garage…” she says before the case is opening up and she’s looking down at the insert, at the picture of her three ghost boys. “Yeah, that would do it.” And then she’s giggling. “Is there a reason you look so grumpy?... You do! You look like someone just kicked your puppy!... Sultry pout my ass…”

“They’re here! The ghosts are here?!” he squeals excitedly at the realization.

Julie turns to him, her smile falling as if he’d interrupted something. “Yes. They’re here. Carlos, this is Luke, Reggie, and Alex.” As she says it, she points to either side of her, and then off to the other side of the room by the windows.

“Did they not come in with you before?” he questions, thinking back to how she’d flicked the light switch on earlier. “Why did you need to signal them?”

Julie breathes out a deep sigh, “I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to see them or not.”

“Why would I be able to see them?” Carlos tilted his head to the side, “I’ve never been able to see them before.”

“Well…” Julie begins awkwardly, “Some things changed tonight.” But before she can continue her thought, his sister is flying up into the air. Not far, just a little bit, but she’s being spun around in rapid circles. And as Carlos watches fascinated he hears her begin to giggle. “Reggie! Reggie put me down! Reggie! You made your point!” and a beat later she’s lowering to the ground again.

Julie places her hands over the front of her stomach, but Carlos could swear she was hovering them above without actually touching. And then her hair is pressing, shifting, moving all on its own. And Julie is nuzzling her head in that direction until it meets some sort of resistance. And if Carlos wasn’t going crazy, then he would assume that Julie was being hugged from behind and that the guy in question, Reggie apparently, was resting his head on her shoulder.

She’s catching her breath, before she breaks into another fit of giggles and her whole person pulls off to the left, as though she were being pulled in by another someone. Luke was the one she’d said had been standing on that side. “Sorry,” she says after a moment, trying to fight back her laughter, “They were just… ummm. Never mind. We can touch now. Which we couldn’t before, so I wasn’t sure if anything else had changed too. We didn’t want to risk them walking through the house where dad might see. So we made a plan for me to check in on you first and then that I’d blink the lights if it was safe for them to come up. But it looks like you still can’t see them anyway.”

“But why can you? And what changed tonight that lets you touch them now? And why are they all hanging off of you like you’ve become their personal human coat rack?”

Her head snaps to look over by the window, where she’d said the Alex guy was. “No, of course not…” then turning back to Carlos, “The guys are all just very affectionate. They’ve been hanging around for weeks and we’ve never been able to touch before. It’s just kind of a big change.” And then her eyes are back to the window. “Yes, I know Alex. But this time it’s a good change, right?” She nods, seeming satisfied with whatever answer he’d given her.

Carlos walks over, wrapping his fingers around his sister’s hand. Instantly he feels a chill run up his arm, his entire appendage feeling like he’d just dumped it in a bucket of ice water. Shaking off the feeling, the undeniable feeling that he just passed through a _freaking ghost_ , he grips his sister tightly and drags her toward the bed.

“You have to tell me _everything._ ”

A half an hour later, dad is knocking on the door and peeking his head in.

“Alright mijos. It’s time to get to bed. It’s late.” His brow furrows slightly as he takes in the gob smacked look on his son’s face. “Are you alright Carlos? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” (You have _no_ idea…)

Julie laughs off the joke easily. “We were just talking about some stuff with the show Papí. We’ll wrap it up.”

What? No. Julie had just barely scratched the surface of this conversation. There was so much more about ghost he still needed to know.

“Okay, well. Don’t stay up too long,” Dad says, his smile going gooey soft as he looked at his children.

“Hey Papí? Would it be alright if I stayed the night in the studio?” As Carlos turns to her, he swears he sees the hand on the bed facing away from the door wrapping around something. “I just, you know, want to feel close to mom.” (Sure. Mom. Like she was fooling anyone…)

Their dad’s face goes all soft again, “Of course mija. Goodnight you two. I love you.”

“Goodnight Papí. Love you too.” Julie stands, ruffles Carlos’ hair and then moves to the door to hug their dad.

Carlos calls after their retreating backs. “Don’t think this conversation is over Julie!”

She laughs as she closes the door, and he’s pretty sure that if he could hear them that her ghosts would be laughing too.

* * *

The weeks after the Orpheum were pretty awesome for Carlos. Having his own personal entourage of ghosts was the coolest freaking thing in the world! True, Alex and Luke didn’t really spend time with him as much. But Reggie was like his cool new ghost big brother. He played video games with him, and basketball, and helped him film ghost videos. Even Alex’s ghost friend Willie had tried to teach him to skateboard once when he came over. They communicated primarily through Carlos’ I-pad (and Carlos now knew it was Reggie who had been stealing his laptop to look up rock music online…) It would have been better if they could actually see one another and talk like Julie could, but they still had a lot of fun. It was an absolute blast to be friends with phantoms. He got now why Julie had kept them a secret!

Or maybe she’d kept the secret for other reasons. And those other reasons had him a bit grossed out. When they performed before, Luke and Julie were insufferable. They constantly made goo-goo eyes at each other. But since the day they found out they could touch, it was like that had been turned up tenfold.

In the few outside shows they’ve done since, it’s been bad. But it is so, _so,_ much worse when they’re practicing in the studio. When they’re at home they don’t have to pretend the guys are holograms. And it’s very obvious, very quickly how Julie and the band are not shy with how much they like to touch each other. Julie always gets close (a little _too_ close in his opinion) when they dance around at practice. She runs her hands up Luke’s bare arms (Jeez! Did the dude _ever_ wear sleeves?), she puts her arms around Alex’s shoulders, she hooks her elbows with Reggie. They’re all just _always_ touching.

And Carlos was pretty sure that if they didn’t have a mic in the way, then Luke and his sister would be making out mid-song. (Although, in reality, Luke looked like that when he shared a mic with Reggie too, so maybe Luke was just the kind of guy who always looked like he wanted to make out with his bandmates…)

And it’s not just rehearsal, it’s literally everywhere. Movie nights in the family room, they’re piled up. Julie floating over the cushions, and the blanket drooped around several people he can’t see. Baking cookies in the kitchen when Julie gets swung around the air as she laughs and flour is thrown through the air around them. On a bad day, Julie curled up in her bed when Carlos brings up tea, seeing her hair being pet as she leans against someone’s side.

It doesn’t matter what it was. They were always, always, _always_ freaking touching. When it was new and novel, he got it. The ghosts had known Julie for weeks without being able to touch her. But now it’s been even longer of them being able to do so. And yet the novelty hadn’t worn off. They still just always touched.

And yeah. Part of it was oddly cute. Julie having friends she was so connected to. But on the other side Carlos was seriously grossed out at how close they were. Because he had friends. School friends and buddies on the baseball team. And he touched them. A gruff hug here, a fist bump there. But he didn’t touch his friends the way Julie touched her phantoms. And yeah, it was a little weird.

It was weird, but he wasn’t worried. (He wasn’t. [Really… { _Shut up_.}])

* * *

Carlos could smell the scent wafting up from the kitchen and it smelled really freaking good. Dad was out at a shoot, and by some small miracle, he’d trusted Julie to watch Carlos for the night rather than calling for Tía. A fact about which Carlos was pleased. It was a lot harder to hang out with the guys when Tía was over (he and Reggie had already had the pleasure of getting an earful from Julie about the last time Tía had gotten spooked by the ghost stuff. Carlos wasn’t sure why he was in trouble, it had been Reggie’s fault!)

Carlos wanted to hang out with the guys, maybe film a couple more ghost encounters with Reggie for his project reel. But Julie told him he wasn’t allowed to hang out until he’d finished his homework (why did she always have to be such a buzzkill?)

But as the smell drifts into his nose as he’s putting the final touches on his assignment, he realizes just how hungry he is. And if Tía wasn’t here to make them something, then who was cooking? Julie wasn’t a terrible cook, but she was no Tía. He’d been expecting Kraft Mac n’ Cheese tonight…

Carlos slams his math workbook closed and grabs up his I-pad. The evidence suggested that one of the guys could cook. And if so, he wanted to catch footage of dinner making itself. As he skips down the stairs, he hears giggling coming from the kitchen, and snippets of conversation from Julie. Confirmed, someone is definitely in there with her. And by the way she’s giggling, it has to be Luke. (Yuck. What did that guy see in his sister anyway?).

Hoping to catch a glimpse of the ghostly cooking before his sister yelled at him to put the camera away, Carlos switched on the tablet and covertly edged the device around the corner of the stairway railing toward the kitchen.

As he looks down at the screen, he winces at what he sees. His sister is sitting up on the counter, and her arms are looped casually around someone in the air in front of her. She’s drawn him into a kiss and it’s the freaking weirdest thing Carlos has ever seen. His sister kissing air. _Gross_. As he hears her laugh carry over the bannister, Carlos sees her move her legs in the video. Widening out and then hooking back behind someone. She’s tilting her head to the side, and her hair is being brushed away. And as Carlos finds himself frozen in fear at what he’s overseeing on the screen his whole face goes white. Because his sister’s skirt is moving like someone is running a hand up her leg. And then she makes a noise that has Carlos yelping out a screech, dropping his I-pad to the ground and racing up the stairs back to his room.

“Carlos!” he hears her cry after him, but he doesn’t respond. Just puts his hands over his ears and rushes into his room. Slamming his door and landing on the bed. Drawing the covers up and over his head in a protective cocoon. Carlos wraps his hands around his knees and rocks back and forth, willing himself to forget what he’d just caught a glimpse of.

A few moments later, he’s hearing a knock at his door and the soft call of his name once again. When he doesn’t answer, he hears his door creak open and Julie is calling, “Can I come in?” He shakes his head, but maybe it looks like a nod from under the blanket (that, or she’s flagrantly ignoring him…), because he hears the gentle sound of her socked feet padding across the wooden floor and then feels the pressure of the bed dipping at the end.

“Will you come out?” she asks softly after a moment.

Knowing his earlier head gesture was unsuccessful, Carlos answers, “No. I’m staying in my bubble. I need to protect my eyes.”

Julie sighs, “Okay. So I take it you did see what happened in the kitchen. Huh?” Carlos doesn’t reply, just pulls himself into his knees a little tighter. “You know, it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been spying.”

Carlos scoffs at that, “Wouldn’t it? I’ve seen how you look at him. This has probably been happening for a while.” Julie makes no move to deny him, and he feels in that instant like he’s going to die from the realization.

There’s another knock at the door, and then it’s swinging open.

“Hey... And you remembered to turn off the stove, right?... Good. How long is it going to be?... I don’t know, we haven’t really talked yet, but he did see us… He did what? Let me see.”

Carlos can hear the sound of speakers playing. Oh. That was why he’d come through the door and not phased in. He’d brought up Carlos’ dropped tablet, and now Julie was playing back the video. _Shit._

“Carlos…” she admonished, and her tone was firm, and she rolled the “R” on his name just like Mamá used to do when he was in trouble. “Carlos, why were you recording us?”

Carlos sniffles, and he suddenly realizes he was crying. For how long, he wasn’t sure, “I didn’t mean to. I just wanted footage of ghosts cooking. I didn’t know you would be…” his words catch in his throat, “Ummm, you know.”

“Okay,” she breathed deeply, “Well, I’m sorry you saw that. We should have been more careful. But you shouldn’t have been filming us without us knowing. I’m going to delete the video okay?” There’s a moment of silence, before she’s breathing out an exasperated sigh, “Yes, I _am_ deleting it. And we are not having this conversation in front of mi hermanito.”

Carlos shuddered. He didn’t want to know what the other side of that exchange was. Never ever for the rest of his life, (and then not even after that).

He can hear the rhythmic tapping on the screen before his sister is speaking again. “Now Carlos, I’d really like you to apologize, and promise you’re never going to sneak footage of us again.”

With a deep breath, Carlos cleared his throat, “I’m really sorry. It wasn’t right for meet to spy on you. I won’t do it again.” ( _For your sake and mine_ …) “So… Ummm… Like… Am I going to have to announce my presence now any time I enter a room? Or can we agree that you and Luke will cool it in the public spaces of the house?”

Julie makes a noise then which is difficult to decipher. Something between a gasp and a chuckle and a groan. Then she’s turning to clearly have a conversation with the guy, “Are you sure?... Maybe we should all talk first… I don’t want this negatively impacting your relationship with him… Yeah, I know that… You’re sweet, I love you too baby.”

They were practically made of sugar. And if she was saying she loved him, then this… whatever it was they had… must have been going on for a while.

“Okay, so Carlos,” her voice seemed to be directed toward him again, “The person you saw with me in the kitchen wasn’t Luke, it was Reggie.”

At that revelation, Carlos gripped the blanket and dragged it over his head. Eyes blinking at the light as he looked incredulously down at his sister. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking awkward and uncomfortable. And hovering above her, at the foot of the bed was his tablet. Reggie, not Luke, _Reggie_ must be standing there holding it.

Carlos looks at her for another moment before he’s asking a question he’s not sure he wants the answer to, “But, I thought you were with Luke?”

Julie is looking over her shoulder, and her face seems awash with worry. Nodding, she turns back to him, but not before she brings her hand up to cup over her shoulder. If Carlos could see him, he’s sure he would see Reggie’s hand resting there. “I _am_ with Luke.”

Carlos’ eyes bug out of his face, “And you’re cheating on him with Reggie?”

Julie sighs in resignation, “No, I’m not cheating on anybody.” She twists her body to look at the air behind her, “This is really hard to explain… Thanks baby.” And Carlos is sure he could see the curls on top of her head dipping and he wonders if Reggie just kissed her there.

Steeling herself, she turns back, “So. I’m not cheating on Luke, or on Reggie,” she swallows thickly, “I’m not cheating on anyone because we’re all together. Like, Luke and Reggie are both my boyfriends.” Carlos’ eyes go impossibly wider, “And, ummm, they’re each other’s boyfriends too.”

Carlos shook his head to clear the fog and tried to process what his sister was telling him, “When the hell did our lives become like one of Tía’s telenovelas?”

Julie laughs throatily, “You’ve got me there.”

“I mean; my sister is dating two ghosts! The hell?!” he throws his hands up in exasperation.

“Three,” she corrects with a chuckle.

“What?” he questions. He had to have misheard her…

“Three,” she repeats, “Luke, Reggie, Alex, and I are all together. Like romantically together. Or, sort of. Alex is gay, so our relationship is platonic. But the guys are all romantic together, so he’s basically my boyfriend by proxy. You know?”

(No. No he didn’t…)

Carlos threw himself back on his mattress, hands in the air once again, “How does that even work?!” he breathed out with exasperation.

Suddenly, his I-pad is floating into his field of vision on the side of his bed. It looks like Reggie has moved to sit next to him. He’s pulled up the sketchpad app that the two have used before to write notes, and that Reggie uses when he’s helping Carlos with his homework.

He’s drawing a square on the screen. In each corner he’s written a little letter, in the upper left is a little purple “J” with lines connecting to the right and down to a little red “R” and a blue “L.” In the lower right corner he draws a pink “A.” Across the shape he draws a line connecting the “L” and “R,” but between the “A” and “J” he draws a series of dashes connecting them, rather than a solid line.

Carlos takes the tablet in his hand, examining the diagram for several moments. “This feels way too complicated for a relationship…”

Julie shrugs and smiles softly, “It’s how we like it. Our souls are all connected to one another. We love each other.”

“Is that possible? Are you allowed to love more than one person?”

“Who says what’s allowed? If we’re all happy then why does it matter?”

“I guess…” he mutters after a few moments. His sister does look genuinely happy, as she smiles across the room to Reggie. And Carlos doesn’t get to see the guy a whole lot, but he knows how much of a dork he is. He’s probably grinning just as bad.

After he finishes processing, Carlos looks back up to his sister, a teasing glint in his eyes “Okay. So if you’re going to be sucking face with your whole band, can we please set some ground rules about where in the house you’re allowed to make out?”

The pillow fight and tickle attack that follows is cut short by the sound of the timer beeping downstairs. Julie and Carlos as still laughing as they arrive in the kitchen. A perfectly cooked chicken pot pie is floating out of the oven, being held up by two ghostly oven mitts. Carlos isn’t sure if Reggie even needs to use them as a ghost, but it looks cool. (Maybe he could convince him to film a ghost cooking segment that he actually knew about).

Julie asks Reggie to get the other guys from the studio as she and Carlos set the dining table. The guys didn’t actually need to eat, but apparently, since the magic hug that made them tangible, the guys can eat now if they want to. So the whole band settles in for dinner a few minutes later.

It’s a bit weird at the beginning as Julie and Reggie catch up Luke and Alex. Some questions are clarified, and Julie reaffirms to Carlos some ground rules about being together with her boyfriends in the house. After a while the awkwardness disappears and they just sort of naturally fall into a pleasant rhythm as they eat (as natural as was possible when one was eating dinner with their sister’s three ghost boyfriends).

The pie is really good, like the smell indicated. Reggie had gone so far as to make homemade freaking pastry. Carlos could not argue with Julie’s relationship if it meant that Reggie would keep cooking him things that tasted this amazing. Around the table there’s laughter, and teasing, and a comfort that permeates the room. And Carlos is happy to see the beaming smile on his sister’s face. It had been a while, since before Mamá, that she looked this carefree.

* * *

Julie was staying over at Flynn’s dad’s place for the weekend. That meant that Carlos was free to have a Guy’s weekend of his own. Reggie and he had already planned a Star Wars marathon. Carlos had helped upgrade Julie’s projector to something more believable for the hologram gimmick. The added bonus was that it was now an actual projector, and with some speakers and a sheet hung from the loft they could set-up a pretty convincing little movie theater in the studio.

Carlos was looking forward to the day together with his buddies, but he was dreading it a little too. Because this was the first real opportunity he’d had to talk to the guys without Julie around since he’d learned about the full context of their group’s relationship. And he knew that, as man of the house, he had a role he needed to fulfill. Dad wasn’t in a position to talk to the guys, so Carlos had to do it. He was just hopeful the guys would understand his duty and obligations as a brother and that this wouldn’t irrevocably ruin their relationship.

Reggie and Luke were up hanging the sheet in the loft. It had stopped being weird a long time ago to see objects moving around on their own. The sheet is moving a little to the left and right, so he assumes Alex was down below guiding the efforts of the other guys. Carlos had just returned to the studio with the bucket of popcorn he’d made up in the kitchen and bagful of sodas and candies.

“Looking good Boy Band,” he called. He knew Luke always bristled when he called them that, but it had become something of a fun joke to continue the nickname. “Who’s ready for some Jedi action!”

His I-pad is drifting up from the table a moment later and when it’s being turned around he can see red lettering looking back at him. Reggie.

_“which are we gonna watch first?”_

Carlos drops his treats to the table, “We’re doing Machete Order. It’s the only way you can watch them right and be able to stomach the prequels. It’s great cause you don’t even have to slog through _Phantom Menace_.”

_“thats the jar jar one right?”_

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Carlos replied, leaning down and starting to empty the snack bag out. After a second, someone is helping him to pull out soda cans to set on the table.

_“i hate jar jar.”_

“You and the whole internet buddy.” Carlos laughed, throwing himself onto the couch and moving to finish getting his laptop hooked into the projector and speaker set-up. Once Episode IV is cued up, Carlos glances around the room. Reggie still has his tablet next to him on the couch. The bowl of popcorn is floating just above the floor on Reggie’s side. Alex or Luke must be sitting on the ground leaning against the other guys’ legs. Whichever’s not on the floor is in the armchair, a can of Coke popping open and dipping in the air.

Satisfied that all the guys are there, Carlos clears his throat. “So… ummm… before we started, I wanted to talk to you guys.”

_“sure. whats up buddy?”_

Carlos licks his lips nervously, “I wanted to talk to you about Julie.”

_“what about her?”_

Carlos takes in a quick gulp of air, fisting his hands in his lap as he slams his eyes shut and says in a rush, “I want to know what your intentions are toward my sister.” He sits like that for a few moments too long, waiting on a reply before his brain clicked and he remembered that he would have to read what they said. Begrudgingly and with embarrassment Carlos pries his eyes open, looking down at the tablet which is now being held up underneath his nose from below the couch on his side. He blinks at the blue scrawl before he turns to the guys.

“I thought we agreed Luke wasn’t allowed to write unless it was an emergency?”

There’s some shuffling, the tablet flying over to the armchair. The can Alex had been sipping now resting on the table. He had to be the one on the chair, since Luke’s handwriting had been from the one sitting on the floor. His assumptions are confirmed a moment later when the tablet is flipping around to showcase a much neater pink script.

_“He said that we love your sister. Our only intention is that she knows that we love her every single day.”_

Carlos nods after reading, “Okay. Because as her brother, it’s my responsibility to make sure that she’s being treated well. And, you know, to casually threaten you if you ever hurt her.”

The tablet is moving back to the couch, and Reggie’s red lettering is turned around on him a minute later. _“dude. were the ghosts. were supposed to be scaring you.”_

Carlos crosses his arms in a pout, “Hey! I’m just trying to do my job and protect my sister.”

Reggie’s the one to answer again, _“and your doing a great job buddy. were all very intimidated”_

Carlos’ scowl deepens, “You’re laughing at me aren’t you?” There’s a scuffle over the tablet before Alex’s writing pops up again. He passes the I-pad over the table after a few minutes of tense silence, having written out quite a long message.

_“We’re not laughing. We think it’s really sweet that you’re looking out for Julie. It’s just that Julie would be the first one to point out that it’s 2021 and she’s a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need you to be looking out for her like this. It’s not that she doesn’t need you, just that you should respect what choices she makes for herself in her love life. She can take care of herself. And, to be honest, her and Flynn are both a bit scarier than you.”_

He winces at the thought, “You’re right. They are scary.” Resolutely, Carlos nods and looks back across the room at the ghosts. “Tell you what, you respect and take care of my sister or else I sick her on you and will only sit back and watch while laughing.”

He feels the tablet tugging out of his hand back to Reggie and then it’s being turned to him one last time.

_“see. thats threatning. we agree to your terms.”_

With a smug and terse nod, Carlos says, “Good. Glad we had this chat. I expect nothing but the best for Julie. Now, who’s ready for Star Wars?”

Popcorn buckets and soda cans float up around the room as if in affirmation. Carlos begins the film, every so often his attention drifting to the side when Reggie would write him out a note about the movie. Carlos was glad things didn’t feel awkward anymore. Glad they were all on the same page about loving and taking care of his sister.

* * *

Two days later, Julie is pulling him into a hug in the middle of the kitchen.

“Thank you for looking out for mi hermanito.” She pulls back to look at him, “But the guys were right. I _can_ take care of myself,” she says scolding him lightly with a smile.

“I know that,” he bristles, shaking her off, “Just don’t ever forget you have five guys who all love you.” Carlos, Dad, and now the guys.

She hugs him again, despite his squirming, “I know hermanito. Te quiero también.”

Carlos slackens against her, returning the hug despite himself. The guys had been right. She was scary.

They wouldn’t try to pull anything on her on pain of death. _Again_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hermanito = little brother  
> Te quiero también = I love you too


	3. Ray

The year after his wife died had been the darkest and most brutal year of Ray Molina’s life. Not just in losing the love of his life and his best friend, but in watching the light fade from his daughter’s eyes at the loss of her mother. When his wife passed, he’d all but lost his daughter too. But the year that came after had been one of family, music, and healing. And while the changes had been significant he was never more grateful to finally have his little niña back.

Ray knew who he had to thank for it, but the actual thanking of them had become something of an impossibility. After almost a year, he has still been unable to successfully convince Julie to introduce him to her hologram band. She’s always ready with some excuse. He doesn’t think he’s asking for much. Even just a call on FaceTime to have a five-minute conversation with the boys who supported his daughter out of her grief would have satisfied him. No words would ever be enough to thank them, but the fact that he hadn’t even been given that luxury was vexing.

If the change hadn’t been as robustly positive for his daughter as it had been, he might have been more concerned. But Julie is like a different person. She’s lighter, happier, full of laughter, brimming with music. And despite his concerns that she was keeping something from him, he trusts her and trusts that these changes are for the better.

Still, it’s the little things he keeps catching that throw him off. Whispered conversations by Julie, overheard and quickly written off as a phone call with the band. Music coming out of the studio at odd hours of the day when Julie is definitely asleep or off at school. Finding his phone after minutes of frantic searching, out in the open in a place he’s sure he’d already checked. He even swore one time he saw Carlos’ Switch playing itself. And if Carlos hadn’t dropped the ghost thing months ago after their French Dip adventure, then he’d swear his house was well and truly haunted.

He’s caught deep in thought on the matter, distracted from editing at the dining table. He doesn’t even register that Julie is calling for him until she’s almost directly next to him.

“Papí?”

“Yeah? Hi,” he says as he shakes the fog from his head, “What’s up mija?”

“I just got off the phone with Flynn. She’s got another gig booked for us,” Julie told him, but if he was being honest, it almost looked like she was talking more to the empty seat to his right than to him directly.

“That’s wonderful mija. Where?”

“That’s kind of why I wanted to talk to you. It’s sort of at a club.” Her eyes dart to the chair again and she nods a little bit, even though he hadn’t actually said anything.

“Mmmm hmmm,” he hummed through pursed lips, crossing his arms over his chest. “And by club I assume you mean a twenty-one and up sort of arrangement?”

“Yes, it’s a place down in West Hollywood. It’s called Crave. It’s really well known for scouting local young talent.”

Ray nods tersely, “Absolutely not.”

Julie pouts, “But dad!”

“No,” Ray answers again, “You’re in high school. You might be a senior now, but you’re still too young to be playing a club.”

Julie looks like she’s about to make another complaint, before she clams up and turns her head to the side for a moment, glancing up and over her shoulder. When she turns back, she’s steeled herself.

“Okay, what about if you came too? Like to chaperone Flynn and I?” Ray narrows his eyes at his daughter, but tilts his head to indicate she continue. “You can keep an eye on us and make sure we don’t get up to any mischief. And I’m sure Flynn could arrange a conversation between you and the club manager to verify that the venue is safe.”

Her eyes look up to him, wide and pleading. She looks so much like her mother, and Ray can already feel his posture and resolve slackening. “Please Papí?” she questions, and her lower lip juts out, and Ray knows the nail has been slammed into the coffin, “This is a really big opportunity for us.”

So it’s with a resigned sigh that Ray drops his crossed arms and holds his pinky finger out to his daughter. She loops hers around his, letting out a whoop. And as Ray takes in her smile, he realizes that despite the oddities of the last year, in the end he’s just happy that she’s happy.

* * *

A week and a half later, on a Saturday evening, finds Ray shuffling Julie and Flynn into his SUV (more suited to transport Carlos’ baseball team than himself and the two girls). They were leaving behind schedule. The first hurdle being that, even months on, Ray still had to reassure Victoria there would be no ghost hauntings in his absence. He was grateful that Carlos had finally dropped the obsession. But whatever prank he had pulled on his Tía still had her wary to babysit on nights when he needed her. And while Carlos was in his last year of middle school, Ray wasn’t comfortable with the idea of his niño at home on his own for the night just yet.

Once confident that Victoria was settled, he’d thought they’d be on their way. But they had another unexpected delay when he saw his daughter come down in her outfit choice for the evening. He and Tori both turned her around on the stairs and insisted she change into something a little more conservative. No skeevy drunk in his thirties was going to be ogling his daughter in that outfit if he had anything to say about it.

Julie and Flynn descended the stairs again almost fifteen minutes later. He and his sister giving Julie a once over as she shot him an amused half-scowl. Once the adults have given their seal of approval to the ensemble, the group is finally on their way. As he’s loading the padded case with the girl’s upgraded projector into the trunk, he catches a snippet of her and Flynn’s whispered conversation up in the middle row of the car.

“Yeah,” Julie whispered, “They liked the first option better, but they say I still look hot, so this one’s fine.”

Maybe she’d sent off a picture to the band for their approval. He bristles a little; not a fan of them describing his daughter as ‘hot.’ Julie gasps and giggles, slapping at the air over the empty seat to her right. He thinks he can see Flynn raising her eyebrows, perhaps she thought the action was as strange as he did. Julie leans right up to Flynn’s ear and whispers something that he can’t hear that has the other girl cackling. Eavesdropping thwarted, Ray slammed the trunk door and made for the driver’s seat. They had to get going before they were any later.

Upon arrival at the venue, Ray immediately insists on a conversation with the manager. He’s talked to the man, Aaron, on the phone, but he wanted to double-check that everything was in place for the evening. The older man gestures their group to join him in a greenroom at the back of the club. The room is spacious. A brightly lit vanity lines one wall. The back corner, tucked away to provide a little privacy from the front part of the room, boasts a pair of plump leather couches. If it hadn’t been for the Sharpied graffiti that painted almost every available surface, what appear to be names of the performers who had previously used this greenroom, he’d think the place looked somewhat professional.

Aaron starts the conversation by expressing his gratitude of _Julie and The Phantoms_ making an appearance at his club. He then rehashes the plan he had previously laid out with Ray. All of the staff had been made aware that Julie and Flynn were underage. The bar staff were only to offer water or soft drinks. He had a detail of his security staff who would be ensuring the girls’ safety during the show. He reassures Ray that this hadn’t been the first show they’ve done with underage performers and does his best to assuage Ray’s fears on the matter. At the close of their conversation, he invites Ray and Flynn upstairs in the club. Flynn they’ll drop off in the booth above the stage to set up the projector, and Ray will accompany him to his office to finalize the contract paperwork.

Ray kisses the top of his daughter’s head as he leaves to allow her to get ready for the performance. Twenty minutes later, when he’s back in the greenroom to wish her luck she eagerly shows him the Sharpie art she has drawn on one wall. The large bin of markers placed out on the vanity apparently there to encourage performers to add their mark to the room. Her swirling purple band logo now a permanent reminder that _Julie and The Phantoms_ had played here. And he thought that the added touch of her bandmate’s names in different script, the blue unintelligible, the red and pink more legible, was a cute and personal touch to the message.

The show, as always, is phenomenal. He’s proud of how talented his niña is. Not for the first time, he’s reminded of how she channels her mother when she performs. The crowd is eating up the performance. He is thankful for the two burly looking security guards that Aaron has stationed toward the front of the stage.

But the audience is the least of his concerns if he’s being honest. The explosive energy and chemistry of Julie on stage with her band is palpable. He’s once again glad to know that the boys live an international flight away. Reaffirmed when they flash into existence during the first song of the set; when the guitarist flashes out to the audience in the middle of one song to ham it up for the crowd; when the bassist straight up walks through the security guard to play flirtatiously next to a girl dancing in the mosh pit. They pepper their performances with this kind of showmanship to highlight the ‘phantoms’ gimmick. Regardless, all three always drift back to Julie and he knows that if they _did_ live here, then he would have the displeasure of beating the guitarist off with a bat. Though, the bassist isn’t that much better if he’s being honest. And the way she looks back at them as they sing is worrisome in a completely different way.

At the close of the hour long set, the audience is roaring, and the band do a last encore to round out the evening. Holding out _Edge of Great_ for the very end. Ray’s breathing relaxes when the guitarist finally flashes out at the end of the show and Julie takes her bow. If he’d actually been sitting next to her on the piano bench, Ray was pretty sure he’d make good on the looks he was giving to her lips. Julie makes her way off the stage, presumably back to the greenroom as the crowd explodes and a DJ takes over the music for the evening.

Aaron swoops up to Ray and asks him up to his office to get away from the thumping music radiating throughout the club. He excitedly chirps to Ray that their revenue that evening was through the roof as he cuts a check for Julie for her portion of the cover charge. He insists that the group is welcome back anytime, before they make it too big to play his little club.

Ray thanks him and stops in the booth to talk to Flynn who is packing up the projector. She says she’ll meet them down in the greenroom to head out in five minutes, assuring him she can handle the equiptment on her own. Concerned, he checks with a security guard anyway before he makes his way back downstairs.

He expects to open the door to the greenroom, gather up Julie first, then Flynn, and make their way out of the venue before it gets too much later and the crowd too much drunker. What he’s not expecting is to open the door and find his daughter floating. Floating! In the middle of the fucking room. He has to be imagining it, right? He was fairly certain his daughter did not possess powers of levitation. He stands frozen at the door, trying to make sense of what he was seeing before him. Julie is spinning off on the other side of the room by the couches. Flying through the air as if she was being twirled about.

“Luke! Put me down. I’m getting dizzy!” she laughed, speaking to no one. But wasn’t Luke the name of her band’s guitarist? All of the sudden, she’s lowering to the ground, and he can swear that he sees her skirt pull as if brushing against something on the way down.

From the shape of the room, Julie can’t really see the door tucked away in the corner like she is. Just as he’s about to make his presence known, to figure out just what the hell is going on, he’s stunned silent again. Because now Julie, his niña, is kissing the air. Kissing the air right in front of her as if someone was there who isn’t. And as bizarre as it is to see her kissing air, the more concerning thing to him is that it’s not a sweet, chaste kiss at all. This is the kind of kiss a father would not want to walk in on.

And things seem to go from bad to worse in an instant, because now her hair is being swept out of the way on its own. Brushing from her shoulder behind her back. And she’s tilting her head off to the side as she snakes her hand up around the air over her neck. And she’s pulling back from the air kiss and he can hear her moan. Oh god, what the fuck? His young and innocent daughter _moans_.

“Reggie,” she breathes out before she turns her head and kisses the air in this new direction. And his brain is just barely holding onto coherency as he processes that Reggie is the name of the bassist. Why would she be moaning the names of her bandmates? Why would she be kissing air? Why would she be floating? Just what the _fuck_ was happening right now?

He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew he had to put a stop to it. Because his teenage daughter is kissing _someone_ and it needed to end right now before he had a heart attack.

He tries to call her name, but finds his throat too dry to form words. So he swallows thickly before trying again. “Julie,” he finally manages to croak out a hoarse whisper.

She jumps upon looking up and seeing him, immediately pulling away from whomever she seemed to be holding onto. Her hair dropping back to lie against her neck; complying with gravity once again. Her eyes widen as she takes him in at the open door, her cheeks flushing; if she’d taken after his complexion rather than her mother’s he’s sure she would have been bright pink.

“Dad!” she tries to cover her expression with a fake looking smile. And all of the sudden, he realizes that he’s seen this fake smile before. How many times had she used it on him to cover… whatever the fuck it was that he just saw? “How long have you been there?”

“I don’t know. I think I first walked in when you were floating around in circles,” he managed to pull together as an answer.

If her cheeks were flushed initially, they’ve now gone devoid of all color as her face pales and her phony smile falls away to a look of panic. “Oh shit.”

“Yeah. Oh shit. I’m really hoping you can explain what in the world I just saw, because I think I might be going insane.”

She’s still for a moment, before she turns over her shoulder. “Stop it Luke. We obviously have to tell him. It’s not like we can hide things anymore.” She’s silent for a beat before speaking again, slightly off to the left. “I don’t know Reggie. We’ll have to ask him.”

Ray is taking in the one sided exchange with confusion. Julie looks to the couch between them and her face pales even more, if that were possible. She looks up to him and holds out a finger as if to say “wait a minute” and then runs for the sofa.

“Alex, sweetie, you need to breathe,” she says as she lays a hand in the air over the couch. It looks like she’s putting her hand on something, but there’s nothing there. Unless there is. She’d said Alex. That was the last one, the drummer. “I know this wasn’t how we wanted this to go,” she says shaking her head and chancing a glance his way. Ray can only gape as his brain continues to try and process what it is that he’s seeing.

“Okay. Deep breath in on four, and then hold it. Okay? No, deeper than that. You have to _actually_ breathe Alex.” Her hand is running soothing circles against the someone as she breathes in deeply for another few moments. “Good job sweetie. That’s much better.”

Julie leans forward and kisses the air again, this time a soft peck, her hand almost like it was drawing someone in by the neck. She then backs away and removes her hand from the air; crisis apparently averted, and finally, slowly makes her way over to stand in front of him.

“Hi Dad. So. I think we have some things we need to tell you,” she says timidly as she shoots him an awkward smile.

“We?” he questions, looking back to the hidden corner of the greenroom.

“Yeah. Dad, meet Luke, Reggie, and Alex,” she says fanning her arm out to the room, her hand indicating in turn, lastly landing on the couch where she’d been standing just moments ago. She turns back to him, taking a deep breath and steeling herself before looking him in the eyes. “My phantoms.”

He’d barely taken in her words when he hears Flynn’s voice carrying through the door he’d left open behind him.

“Alright Molinas! How about we get out of here? I vote the Sprinkles ATM on the way back!” she sing-songs brightly as she barges into the room, swinging the projector case back and forth. She stills almost immediately, taking both father and daughter in. “Is everything okay?”

“He saw me with the guys,” Julie explained looking to Flynn. The other girl’s eyes went wide.

“The hell Julie? What the fuck were you doing?” she questioned, dropping the case to the floor and crossing her arms.

“We weren’t doing anything!” Julie challenged, Ray shot his daughter his own wide-eyed looked as he too crossed his arms. Julie suddenly appearing under interrogation by the harsh postures of himself and Flynn.

Julie whipped her head over her shoulder, “Oh shut up Reggie. You’re not helping,” and then a beat later, “No. You don’t get a cupcake… If you pout, I swear to God...”

Ray continues to take in the absolute insanity that is his daughter talking to no one. He’s beyond concerned at this point. Turning back to Flynn he asks, “Flynn, do you know what’s going on here?”

Flynn and Julie share a look, Flynn’s stance relaxing slightly, “I… Ummm… So what exactly do you know? I’m not sure what I can say.”

Julie turns on the two of them to face the couches again, nodding at the air. “Okay. Yeah. That’s probably the best way Alex.” She turns back to Ray and takes a deep breath, “Dad. Can we go back home? To the studio? I think it would be easiest to show you. But it shouldn’t be here,” she glances back to the still open door. No one aside from Flynn had walked in, but he understands the implication of her gaze.

His eyes rake over the couches in the corner again, squinting as if by doing so he could see whatever or whomever it was that his daughter could presumably see. “Okay. I expect a full answer once we get home. I’m worried about you mija.” He genuinely was. The implications of the events of the evening were quite a bit to take in. He knew he didn’t have all the pieces, but his biggest lightbulb was the idea that her phantoms may be a little more real to her than she had let on.

Flynn picked up the dropped projector and makes for the door to the greenroom. Ray following behind and picking up Julie’s make-up case that she had left on the vanity. Julie stayed behind near the couches, her hands held out in front of her, curled as if clasped around something.

“It’s up to you Luke. It’s okay if you want to meet us back there… I’ll be fine… I know you didn’t mean to; it wasn’t your fault. This was bound to happen sooner or later .” From the mirror at the vanity, Ray sees his daughter pop up on her toes behind him and brush her lips lightly in the air in a tender kiss. “I know. I love you too.”

_“Oh shit,”_ indeed.

* * *

The ride home was silent and tense. Flynn was supposed to come over to spend the night after the performance. There’s a small debate and in the end, it’s decided that she will still come over despite the looming conversation. Julie seeming to imply that her presence will help confirm her story. When he glances into the rearview mirror, he can see that Julie’s hand now appears to be holding onto something in the vacant passenger side seat. Maybe a hand? Of one of her phantoms? He tried to pry more answers from her, but she refused, saying that they would explain everything once they got back to the studio.

As they turn into their neighborhood, Julie spins her head around to the backseat. “Reg, can you please go let Carlos know to come out to the studio?”

Ray eyes the clock and then the rearview mirror. “It’s almost midnight mija, your brother should be asleep.”

Julie shakes her head with a light laugh, “We both know he’s not though. And besides, he should be a part of this conversation too.”

Ray nods, “So I take it since you just spoke to Reggie that Carlos knows about him?”

Julie’s lips press into a line, “Yeah. He’s known for a while now. We’ll explain Papí, I promise.” She swallows thickly, “But, ummm. Can we maybe wait until after Tía goes home? Alex is worried she might not be able to… process everything.”

Ray’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline, “That wasn’t a prank Carlos played on her a year ago was it?”

Julie shook her head with a guilty look, “No. It was Reggie. He’s really sorry about it. He didn’t know she would get so scared. He hasn’t done anything since. I promise he’s not malicious, he’s just a dork.” But the way she says the insult isn’t actually insulting at all, it’s fond and with a hint of a smile. And if Ray finds his knuckles turning white as he grips the wheel, and slightly, just slightly, pushing the speed limit as he winds through the streets then who’s to say.

Victoria notices how tense they all seem when they walk through the front door. He waves her off and says he’ll be having a long talk with Julie. When she offers to stay, he grabs her by the elbow and leads her out to the front porch. Squeezing her in a tight hug, he reassures that he’ll let her know how things go, but that he needs to talk to his daughter alone first, _por favor y gracias_. Once her taillights have slipped out of his vision he turns down the path to the garage, taking several deep breaths before he pushes the door open.

The sight he takes in is interesting to say the least. The studio looks like he’s seen it before, but the state of the people and… objects… inside has him questioning his sanity again. Flynn and Julie are speaking off to the side of the room by the piano in hushed whispers. And behind Julie, one of the electric guitars, the blue one, the same one he’d seen Luke playing during the set that evening, is floating in the air. The strap is widened in such a way that he could almost imagine a person-sized gap filling it out.

Carlos is sitting on the couch, talking excitedly to no one. Except that his I-pad is floating in the air off to the side. The screen lighting up, before it’s turning of its own accord in front of the boy’s face. His son looking at what’s on the screen before continuing whatever he was talking about. On the other side of the room, there was a rhythmic tapping across one of the drums in the kit, wooden sticks floating up over the instrument on their own.

As he takes in the drumming sound, the sticks still and then Julie is turning her attention to the door. “Hi Dad,” she grits out awkwardly, “Ummm. Come in. Take a seat.” Ray begins to take a few steps to the couch to sit next to Carlos, “Oh, ummm. Not there. Reggie’s sitting there,” she explained hurriedly. Ray diverted his path and sits in the armchair instead.

Julie exchanges another look with Flynn, who huffs out a sigh and makes for the wooden chair on the other side of the studio.

“So…” Julie begins, wringing her hands in front of her. The guitar behind her shifts in the air, and she turns her face up over her shoulder and smiles lightly at whatever she sees there. Taking a deep breath, she continues, “So we think it would be best if we just showed you. And then we could all talk about this.”

The tablet on the couch lowers to the coffee table, and Ray takes in the fact that the projector Julie always used for her performances is also sitting on the table. Fully packed away in its case. A shuffling on the other side of the room draws his attention as the bass floats up and the strap moves as if it were being slung over a shoulder.

Julie turns to the instruments, “So what are we thinking?... No, that one’s a little too hands on… Good call Luke, we could hold that interlude out indefinitely if we need to.”

Julie makes her way over to the piano and starts playing. One of their newer pieces, a slower song, still on the pop-rock side, but closer to a ballad than their usual fare. Rays eyes dart to the projector case again, almost hoping it to be plugged in and turned on. But it’s still locked away.

So a moment later, when the rest of the band blasts into the song, he finds himself both surprised and not at all when the phantom boys appear in the studio. They sing along for a few bars, but to tell you the truth, Ray isn’t paying any attention to any of the lyrics. His eyes are completely wide. He was expecting this. He was _expecting_ this… There was no way he could have expected _this._

Taking several shaky breaths, Ray tries to make sense of the reality presented in front of him. The boys are all looking at him with a mixture of emotions. The bassist, Reggie, looks almost giddy as he plays. The drummer looks on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Luke though, Luke is less readable. He looks distrusting, almost protective as his eyes flit between Ray and the rest of the band.

The song reaches the musical interlude in the middle, when Julie’s playing backs down to a soft piano lilt, and the rest of the band follows suit. The guitars mellowing to background sounds; supporting the melody, and the drums keeping a soft and steady rhythm on the snare and cymbal.

“So dad. I’d like you to officially meet my band. I know you’ve been wanting to meet them for a while,” Julie explained from behind the piano, her hands still carrying on the song. Each of the guys makes a gesture of hello, a salute from Reggie, a shy smile from Alex, a curt nod from Luke.

Ray opens and closes his mouth, gesturing to the projector on the table, knowing the answer even as he asks, “Not holograms?”

“Not holograms,” confirms Flynn with a shake of her head.

“Ghosts!” Carlos chirps in brightly from the couch, where he’s bouncing up and down. Clearly not tired even at the late hour.

“Ghosts,” Ray repeats back with a sigh, slumping back into the chair. If he wasn’t just presented with the evidence, he might have contested the declaration. He might have bundled up his daughter in a hug and all but dragged her to Dr. Turner to address the concerning reality she was presenting him with. Was that why she’d confided in her friend and brother before she’d confided in him? Was she worried he’d think she had gone mad? He certainly felt like he was going mad right in that instant.

“It’s so cool to actually, officially meet you Ray!” Reggie piped in, and Alex and Luke both cut a glare to the bassist.

“Really?” Ray asks with a laugh.

“Really!” Reggie answers eagerly, “You don’t know it, but we hang out all the time.”

Ray raises his eyebrows at that, “We do?”

“Oh yeah!” Reggie raised his hands, gesticulating excitedly, “I help you in the kitchen, and I’m there when you’re editing, and –” the rest of his sentence is cut off as the boy vanishes. Ray’s eyes go wide again, as he takes in the vacant space where the bassist used to be. Even the bass has disappeared this time.

At his look of confusion, Luke barks out, “Reggie! Play!”

The thrumming of bass notes sound in the air once again, and a few seconds later Reggie pops back into view. “Whoops. Sorry. I got so excited I forgot.”

Ray points to the air where the boys are, “So how does this work exactly? They can be seen when you play together, but otherwise they’re invisible?”

Julie nods, she hasn’t let up her playing the whole time, her fingers moving across the keys and improvising around the melody to keep the song flowing. “Yes, to you and anyone else. I can see them all the time.”

Ray looks around the studio, “Why only you?” he questions.

“We don’t know,” Alex answers, his voice sounding quiet and uncertain. Whether by the question or by Ray’s presence he’s not sure. The drummer takes in a shaky breath before he adds, “Unfortunately, the afterlife didn’t come with an instruction manual.”

Ray nods, attempting understanding, “So they can be seen when they play, but they can’t touch people?” Ray questions, standing and making his way over to Reggie.

Reaching out a hand and raising his eyebrows in question. At Reggie’s shrug he tries to make contact with the boy and finds his hand passing through him; a resounding chill flickering up his arm. He has a sudden awareness that he’s definitely felt that sensation before, but he’d always chalked it up to a chill in the air, not the presence of ghosts.

“Hmmm. I’d wondered, because they pass through people at your shows. But they can touch you?” He turns to his daughter; the questions he really wasn’t looking forward to asking starting to bubble to the surface. “I mean, I assume you can touch, what with the floating. And I also assume I wasn’t just watching you kissing air?”

All four instruments in the room falter for a moment before they find their rhythm again. Each of the band members darting their eyes to one another, none taking the initiative to address his question.

Carlos erupts into laughter across the room, tipping over onto the couch and holding his side, “Oh man Julie. You guys are in for it now!” he wheezes out through his laughter. Flynn holds it together for a moment before she is also laughing, attempting to compose herself behind her hand.

Ray eyes the band incredulously. The existence of ghosts was a lot to take in, and he had so many questions he still wanted answered. But as a father the primary concern he had right now was what the intention was from these boys to his daughter. If those looks they shot one another on stage was anything to go by, whatever their relationship was, it was beyond where he would have liked to have parental intervention.

The boys all look to Julie, clearly turning to her to take the lead on how to broach the topic. After a few moments of staring down intently at her piano keys, Julie takes a breath and finally meets her father’s eyes.

“We’re together.”

“You and Luke?” he questions. It had to be the guitarist. It _had_ to be. His eyes turn to bore holes into the ghostly boy in front of him. Luke at least has the sense to look a little guilty.

“No,” she gulps, her playing faltering a little bit, “All of us. As in all four of us. We’re all together.”

Ray had just had confirmed to him the existence of ghosts, and yet somehow the reality of his daughter being in a relationship with not one, not two, but _three_ boys was the most earthshattering revelation of the day.

Ray took a few steps backward, falling back into the armchair, barely catching Reggie’s call of “Careful Ray!”

Ray turns his wide open eyes back to his daughter. “Okay. As much as I might not want to, I need to know everything. Start from the beginning.”


	4. Victoria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings in this chapter for panic attacks and shock response. AKA Tia Victoria freaks the fuck out about ghosts and has trouble processing.

Victoria knew she’d taken on a bigger role in their lives after her sister had passed. And she’d taken on that role with very little complaint. She knew the pain of losing one’s mother, but Tori had been an adult when she’d lost her own Mamá. Julie and Carlos were still young. Now, they would live a life more without Rose than the time they had with her. And it was vastly unfair of the universe to do that to them. And sure, she missed her sister too. Now all that was left of their family was her and her father. There was a hole in her life that could never be filled again. But she could stay strong and supportive, because that was what her family needed her to be.

Ray had been needing her support less and less over the last year, as he grew more accustomed to parenting on his own. And Julie was doing substantially better now that her band was doing well. Victoria was so happy for her sobrina for conquering her pain and shining like the star she was. Still, there were certain conversations that even Ray was wary to have with his daughter. So she can’t say she’s surprised at the talk they’re having this morning in her kitchen.

Ray cautiously looking around the room as she’s serving them up coffee, a plate of mallorcas already set out on her small dining table. She laughs at him as she sets the coffee cup down in front of him before taking a seat.

“What are you looking for exactly?”

“Just making sure we’re _alone_ ,” he emphasizes the last words and clears his throat more strongly than she thinks is necessary for the statement.

Looking around herself, “Pretty sure we’re the only ones here cuñado. Are you really so nervous that you’re seeing ghosts? I thought that was my thing?” she chuckles as she takes a sip of her coffee.

Her brother’s face pales, and his eyes go wide, before he’s laughing off the interaction and taking a sip of his own coffee.

“So, you’d said in your text that you were worried about Julie?” she questioned, “specifically, and let me know if I’m remembering this correctly, about her ‘blossoming womanhood?’”

Ray’s face goes a bright shade of red, and he drops his head. He takes a long drag of coffee before he can face her again. “I didn’t exactly want to type out a conversation about my daughter’s sex life in a text Tori.”

“Hypothetical or active?” Ray doesn’t answer, but his face says it all. Victoria blinks and then grabs for a mallorca from the table, shoving the pastry into her mouth as she processes his non-statement.

“For how long?” she questioned after swallowing her bite.

“Little less than a year,” he answered with more resolve than she would have expected based on the response. Her reaction was to cough out a cloud of powdered sugar across the table.

“A year?!” she coughs out at last, “And how long have you known?”

“Two weeks.” Victoria suddenly thought back to that night a few weeks ago when Ray had asked her to watch Carlos for the night.

“Was that why you were so tense when you came back from the club that night? You’d just found out?” she asked after taking a sip of coffee to clear the sugar from her mouth.

“Something like that,” Ray chuckled dryly.

“Who’s she seeing?” Ray’s face purses into an unreadable expression.

“I think it would be better if she told you. It’s… complicated,” he answers at last.

“Complicated how?”

Ray’s face tenses again as he seems to contemplate his answer, licking his lips, “Well, for a start it’s not just one someone.”

Tori nods her understanding, “Ah. So she’s been active with a lot of partners? Is this a rock star sleeping with groupies sort of arrangement?” She expected another unreadable expression at that one, or perhaps a look of mortification at the implication. He lets out another dry laugh instead.

“No,” he shakes his head, “It’s not like that. It’s the same partners. Just more than one.” Ray takes a weighted breath, “As in all at the same time. Together.”

Victoria’s eyes go slightly wide at the confession, “Woah. Okay. So, complicated. Got it.”

Ray looks to the ceiling and heaves out a sigh, “You have no idea…”

Tori takes another bite of her pastry, turning the piece over in her mouth as she processes everything her brother had told her. “So, it sounds like you’ve already talked to her about this a little bit. What did you want me to do?”

Ray upturned his cup, drinking the last of his coffee in one big swallow, “I think she’s embarrassed to really talk to me about this. If Rose were here…”

He doesn’t have to finish the sentence he leaves hanging in the air, Victoria knows. If Rose were here, Julie would have her mother to talk to about her sexual exploration. She’d take that important step in her relationship with her mother from innocent daughter, to friend and confidant.

Victoria remembered the conversation she’d had with her own mother about her first time. Sure, the bastard ended up cheating on her three years later and she divorced his ass. But as a young girl the month before her wedding, it had been such an important conversation. Her mother had given her hell for not waiting until after the wedding (and she may have forced her into a confessional booth the following Sunday to repent her sins; something Victoria had no intention of repeating with Julie, it was the 21st century after all…).

But she had still supported her. She’d given her guidance on what to expect as a woman. Had advised her on making sure she only did things she was absolutely comfortable with. Her mother’s most important concern being that Victoria felt like she was respected, loved, and cared for and to never settle for anything less. And as a wife and a lover, she took that advice to heart.

Julie didn’t have her mother anymore to give her that important pep talk. So Victoria understood Ray’s request for his sister to fill those impossibly big shoes. Victoria reaches out a hand across the table to grab Ray’s in her own.

His eyes look cloudy, as he turns his head to the side and looks out the small window in her condo’s kitchen to the sunlit world outside. “Estoy preocupado por mija.”

Tori runs her thumb across his hand, “Por supuesto que sí. Es tu hija. Se te permite. Pero las niñas pequeñas crecen con el tiempo. Ella tiene casi dieciocho años. Tienes que saber que esto sucederá eventualmente.”

His eyes are wet with tears as he breathes out, “Sí, pero no pensé que pasaría sin que su Mamá estuviera aquí para ayudarla.”

“¿Sabes que Rose habló con ella antes de que muriera? ¿Que la llevó al médico y le dio una receta para el control de la natalidad?

Ray’s head whipped around to look at her, eyes widening, “¿Qué? No. Nunca lo dijo.”

Victoria rolled her eyes, “Típico. Rose probablemente sabía que te asustarías.”

Ray blinked away tears, laughing lightly at the fact that his wife had kept this little detail from him so he wouldn’t lose his mind with worry. “Sólo quiero que mija esté a salvo Tori.”

“Lo sé,” she answered simply.

* * *

Julie seems surprised when she walks up to the attendance office fifteen minutes before school lets out to see Victoria standing there.

“Tía? What are you doing here? Is everything okay?” her face paints with worry. It had been a while, but Victoria remembers the day two years ago when she’d had to pick her up from school for very different reasons. She quickly moves to assuage her fears.

“Everything’s fine mija. Don’t worry. I’m just picking you up early today because we’ve got something we need to take care of today,” she gives her sobrina a hug. “Do you have everything you need?”

Julie hands the hall pass slip in her hand over to the woman sitting in the attendance window, “I didn’t stop at my locker. I just grabbed the stuff I had in class. Am I allowed to go get my things?” she asked the woman.

“Yes dear, that’s fine. Hurry back though. School’s ending soon and if you don’t get out of here you’ll get caught in the post-school traffic,” the woman advises, prompting Julie to turn on her heel and make her way back down the hall.

Tori watches her for a moment, and could swear she caught a snippet of conversation being spoken as she walked off. But since Julie doesn’t turn around to ask her directly, Tori assumes it must just be her talking to herself about what she needed from her locker. As she waits, she turns back to the attendance secretary and finishes signing her sobrina out from school.

Two minutes later, Julie is making her way back down the hallway, backpack slung over her shoulders. Victoria pushes off the wall and meets her sobrina in the middle. “All ready to go?” she asks brightly.

With Julie’s nod, the two make their way out of the building and toward her car. The attendance secretary had been right. The parking lot was filling up fast and Victoria did not want to get caught up in the traffic after the bell rang. She ushered her sobrina to speed up slightly and she hit the reverse almost immediately after getting into her car to get out of the lot as quickly as possible.

Once on the streets of LA, Victoria turns to Julie, “So how was school today?”

“It was fine. Nothing really exciting happened. I had a quiz today in math, but I think I did pretty well,” out of the corner of her eye, Victoria sees Julie turn over her shoulder slightly and smile toward the backseat. Casting a glance in the rearview mirror, the only thing Tori sees is Julie’s backpack. Maybe she had some notes in there that had helped her to do well?

“Well that’s good. You know how important I think school is.”

“Is that why you took me out of class early today?” Julie snickered, teasing.

Victoria tightened her grip on the steering wheel slightly, “No. Like I said, we have something we need to do today. And your dad just asked me about this errand this morning, so we didn’t have a chance to talk to you about it before. I didn’t want you getting on the bus on accident. So I picked you up.”

“Oh. Okay. What’s the errand?” Julie questioned.

“In a minute mija. You just got out of school! How about a snack?” Victoria smiled, glancing over her shoulder at the girl. Julie gave her a quizzical look. She knew something was up; her sobrina was smart. But this was not the kind of conversation they could have while in the car. When it became clear that Tori was not planning to elaborate further, Julie sunk back in her seat and affirmed that a snack sounded good.

They stopped at a small, local ice cream shop. Julie took a long time deciding on her choices, eyes flipping back and forth across the shop rapidly as she smiled broadly at the selection in front of her. Eventually she picked a weird amalgamation of flavors. A scoop each of Dulce de Leche, Cotton Candy, and Mint Chocolate Chip. When Victoria questioned whether she really wanted three whole scoops, Julie just shrugged and said she was hungry.

Once back in the car and on the road again, Victoria notices that Julie is methodically only eating one flavor, the caramel. Maybe she’s eating them one at a time? They would be strange together. Tori’s own cup sits with a cover in the cup holder. It’s just another short drive up the hills of Los Feliz until they’re up at the secluded park Victoria planned for them to visit. It’s a week day, and a lot of students are still in school, so the park is pretty much vacant when they arrive.

“Here we are!” Victoria declares, as she parks. Grabbing her ice cream and hopping out of the car.

“Our errand is at a park?” Julie asks as she too makes her way out of the car.

“Oh, just part of it. You’ll see,” Victoria calls in a sing-song voice, winding her way up the path and gesturing over her shoulder for Julie to follow her.

It’s another few minutes by the time they’ve found their way to a place off the beaten path. Victoria finds a picnic table off under a tree and goes to take a seat. By the time she gets herself settled at the table, she looks expectantly at Julie to sit down across from her. When she sits down, Victoria clocks that almost all of her ice cream is now gone.

“Well, I guess you _were_ hungry, huh?” she asks as she takes the cover off her own bowl of strawberry.

“Yeah,” Julie chuckles, looking off to either side of her with a smile. “So what are we doing out here exactly Tía? Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy for the ice cream and everything, but you’ve been acting weird since we left school. You brought me out to the middle of nowhere. Should I be worried about a serial killer situation?”

Victoria laughed and shook her head, “Oh Julie. You and your imagination. I promise, it’s nothing bad.”

“Then what?” Julie pressed again.

Tori laid her spoon down in her bowl, taking a deep breath, “Alright. Straight to the point then. Your dad came to me this morning. He wanted me to talk to you about your sexual activity.”

Julie paled, her head turning quickly to one side, then the other, “I… ummm… how much did he tell you?”

“Well,” she began, “he told me things were complicated, and that I should ask you if I wanted the specific details. What I do know is that you’ve been seeing multiple partners. And that your dad is just worried about whether you are being safe.”

Julie looked to her left again, it was a little weird how she kept spinning her head back and forth, but Victoria supposed she couldn’t have fully expected her to keep eye contact given the circumstances. Julie’s jaw clenches a little, and her eyes narrow almost imperceptibly in that direction. If she was mad at her for bringing it up, Victoria would have preferred she be direct about it. The women in their family were not known for beating around the bush.

At last, Julie turns to face her again, “Of course we’re being safe Tía. You know I keep up on my birth control. Mamá told me,” she choked on the word for a moment, “Mamá told me that she’d told you we talked.” Julie leans slightly to the right, and she relaxes in a way that would make Tori assume she was leaning against something if it weren’t for the fact that she was sitting on the bench alone.

“Well mija. You know there are more risks with sex than just pregnancy. And those risks increase when you’re seeing more than one person. Have you had an STI screening?”

Julie’s face flushes as red as her dark complexion allows. Tori knows this is an embarrassing conversation. It was part of the reason she wanted to be out of the way of anyone and on neutral ground. A safe space to have this talk that she could walk away from after the fact and not have memories resurface. Like what might happen were they to talk in her room or out in the studio. Julie looks up and to the right quickly, and then roughly shakes her head.

“So is that a no? You haven’t had a test done?” Victoria asks at the movement.

“What?” Julie asks, turning back to her aunt as though just only remembering she was there, “Oh ummm no. I mean yes,” she shook her head again, this time looking more like she was shaking away her own thoughts. “Yes, I have had a test. Flynn and I both went to a clinic a few months ago. I’m clean.”

Victoria nods her head, “How about we say STI free? Clean has some bad connotations. Being sexually active doesn’t make a girl ‘dirty’ mija. You’re almost eighteen. It’s totally normal to have sex by your age. You just have to do it smart and safe. ¿Entiendes?”

Julie nods, biting her lip and looking over her left shoulder again.

“Now, you may be STI free, but if you have multiple partners, then it’s important to know whether each of them has also been tested? Do you know if they have been?”

Julie clams up a bit again, tapping her left hand nervously against the table. After a moment, the movement stills, and Victoria isn’t sure, but she’d almost swear she can see Julie’s thumb running across the air.

“Ummm. They, ummm…” she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, “They’re not really in a position where they can pass on anything.”

Victoria nods, trying to put the pieces together, before something finally clicks in her head, “Oh. Are these your bandmates?”

The way Julie’s head whips back to her and her eyes go wide is all the confirmation Tori needs. “I see. So since they’re in Europe, we’re talking more of a sexting and Skype sex sort of situation?” Tori takes a relieved breath. This must have been the “complication” to which Ray had referred. There were different things to talk about if they weren’t having traditional intercourse. Masturbation with a partner via the internet had far fewer associated risks.

Julie’s eyes are still wide, and it’s taking a lot longer for her this time to answer. Again twisting her head from side to side. The action was starting to concern Victoria, it wasn’t a physical reaction she had been expecting, and certainly not one she had seen Julie make in any of their prior heart to hearts.

At last her eyes turn back to Tori, “So, what _exactly_ did my dad tell you?”

“I told you mija. Just that it was complicated and that you were with multiple partners.”

Julie nods, “But he didn’t tell you what they were?”

Tori tilts her head at the use of the word, “ _What_ they are? What do you mean?”

Julie breathes out a huff of air, cursing under her breath, “Fuck.” Julie slammed her right hand on the table. It almost looked from the action that she’d tried to do the same with her left, but it only moved marginally upward from where it was resting on the table’s surface, as though it were being pinned down.

She bolts up out of her seat quickly, “I can’t do this!” she declares loudly and moves to swing her legs out of the bench. As her right leg moves, she encounters some sort of resistance that has Tori tilting her head again. Her left hand also doesn’t move with her and Tori sees her sobrina’s body twisting at an odd angle. Her hand being held up in mid-air; her leg bent at the knee and hovering above the bench. It looks like she’s about ready to topple over from standing on one leg only. But she doesn’t, in fact, Julie looks remarkably stable as she stands in the air.

She’s silent again after her outburst, and then after a moment and with a resigned breath, Julie finally says, “Please let me go.”

Victoria is confused. From what she can see, the only person holding onto Julie is… Julie. And as strange as the pose is, she’s still just standing there.

“I’m serious Luke. I just need a minute,” Victoria’s eyes widen minutely. Luke was the name of one of her bandmates she knew for sure. But as they’d rehashed just a couple minutes ago, the boy lived in Sweden. He couldn’t possibly be here. Had she called him? No, Victoria didn’t see Julie’s phone anywhere on the table.

Julie tugs at her arm, but it doesn’t appear to move with her, “Please Reggie… I just can’t deal with this... I don’t know if I want you to leave. I’m barely holding my shit together right now.”

Now Tori is very, _very_ concerned. What conversation was her sobrina having right now? “Julie? Mija? Who are you talking to?” she asks, concern evident in her tone.

Julie turns to her at last. Still standing in the awkward pose. Still not faltering. She takes a deep breath, “Tía, this is Luke, and this is Reggie,” with her free hand she gestures first to her right side, and then her left, “My boyfriends.”

Victoria takes in the statement, but isn’t sure she fully understands exactly what her sobrina is saying. Tori knew trauma, like the loss of a parent, could impact mental health. Was she seeing people that weren’t there? Victoria narrowed her eyes at Julie and looked to both sides, detecting nothing other than her sobrina’s strange posture.

“Cariña. What on earth are you saying? You’re scaring me.”

Julie whips her head to the left quickly as she grits out, “Reggie, don’t you dare.”

But it’s too late, because Julie’s empty ice cream bowl starts to float up over the table. Flying. All by itself.

So Victoria does the only feasible thing that a person could do in such a situation. She screams.

* * *

It’s another several minutes before Victoria can make sense of what’s happening around her. She’s never blacked out before in her life (okay, so maybe a couple of times back in her college drinking days…), but she’s certain it’s happened to her now. She had been instantaneously teleported back in her mind to the incident a year ago with Carlos and the floating sheet in the living room of her cuñado’s house. She was utterly terrified.

As her breathing evens back out, she feels the sensation of circles being rubbed along her back, and can barely make out the sound of Julie speaking.

“I don’t know Reg… Thank you Luke, you’re right. It _was_ fucking stupid… If she doesn’t kill you again, I will… Of course I’m serious Reginald… Because you gave her a fucking panic attack… I know you didn’t know it would happen… Yes, I know you didn’t mean it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t still happen… Yes, you _should_ feel sorry –” Julie stops talking as she takes in the change in Victoria’s breathing and the small groan that makes its way passed her lips.

“Tía? Are you okay?” Julie asks. Victoria blinks away the fuzziness on the edges of her vision. Tori looks across from her and stares down the empty cup of ice cream. It’s sitting still, back on the surface of the table. But she’s shooting it a glare, as if to move her eyes away would allow it to unnaturally float away again. “Tía? Please say something. We’re all worried about you,”

Victoria blinks slowly as she turns away from the cup and back to her sobrina. All? There’s no one there except for herself and Julie. “There’s no one here…” she mumbles.

“Yes there is Tía. Reggie and Luke are right here. Do you remember me telling you that? You just can’t see them, but they’re here,” Julie explains with a soft smile. Victoria shakes her head a little again.

“No… No… that doesn’t make any sense…” Tori reasoned. Why did her brain suddenly feel like it was filled with glass marbles?

“I know it doesn’t make sense. But I promise that I’m telling you the truth. My boyfriends are right here.”

Victoria looked around the table again, narrowing her eyes, “Are we in Sweden?”

Julie looked up to her side, “Can you go back to the house and let dad know what happened? And grab your acoustic. I think it would help if she could actually see you… Yeah… And Luke, hurry please,” she turned back to Tori, “We’re not in Sweden Tía. We’re still at the park. We haven’t gone anywhere.”

“Then they’re on the phone?” Victoria’s brain was trying to run through every reasonable explanation to make sense of what her sobrina was explaining to her. Because invisible band members and floating ice cream made absolutely zero sense.

“No, they’re really here. Well, Luke just left, but Reggie is still here. He’s worried about you Tía. Please tell me if you’re okay.” She turns to look across the table. Maybe she’s checking that the ice cream bowl isn’t flying too. It seemed to be staying put…

“Reggie… Please stop pacing. It’s going to be okay… You’re not going to be in trouble, I promise. Come here.” Julie reached a hand out. Victoria’s eyes went wide again as she took in her sobrina. Julie stood and was opening her arms out and circling them back around the empty air. She ran her hand down the air in front of herself, her other hand tucked up and around an invisible something, tucking it over her shoulder. She kissed the air just over her stilled hand.

“It’s okay baby. I’m sorry I yelled at you, I should have reacted better… I’m not mad at you. I was just worried… You don’t need to cry baby… She doesn’t hate you, okay? She doesn’t even know you… Yes, I am aware that the only times you’ve interacted you’ve scared her… But you were just trying to help, you weren’t trying to hurt her…” Julie’s motions stilled, both of her hands moving to hold onto the air in front of her face. Palms held flat out and facing one another parallel. “Stop it. Don’t say that. You’re not an idiot Reggie. I love you.” Tori’s eyes widened as she saw Julie pull her hands toward her, closing her eyes and raising her lips in what appeared to be a chaste kiss.

“Right?” she asked again, “Say it Reggie… _Reggie_ … You’re damn right I do, and don’t you ever forget it.” Julie leaned in and gave a slightly longer kiss to the air in front of her before jumping up and wrapping her arms around the air in another fierce hug. She’s barely on the ground at all, the very tips of her toes brushing the grass. Victoria’s face contorts in fear, because Julie cannot… _cannot_ be _floating._ Her breathing starts to quicken, causing Julie to drop to the ground in an instant and whip around to face her again.

“Tía?” Julie’s hand is on her back, rubbing circles there, “Try to take a few deep breaths okay? Breathing will help.” Victoria tries her best to do as she’s asked, but her mind still feels like a mess of cotton balls. But she can focus on breathing. That’s something she can do.

About a minute later, Julie’s looking to the other side of the table. “Luke.” That was the name of the other one she had mentioned… “Is dad on his way?... Okay. That’s good. How long did he say?... Okay. Reggie can you get my phone please? It’s still in the car. In my backpack. You know the pocket, right?”

She registers that Julie is patting her lightly on the shoulder, “Tía, my dad is coming over. He’ll be here in, like, fifteen minutes. He’ll help us out okay?”

Tori nodded her head slowly. She knew Julie’s dad right? That was a person she knew. He’d help keep things from floating. There must be something wrong with gravity today. It couldn’t possibly be working right. Julie’s phone is now sitting in front of her face, also floating. And it may or may not have just popped into view on its own just a second before that. Maybe there were other laws of the universe that were also out of whack. Maybe Julie’s dad, whoever he was, could put everything back to rights again. That would be nice.

“I just need to turn on my location so dad can find us,” she explained. Julie sat down on the bench, setting her phone on the surface. Victoria was pleased to see that it stayed on the table and didn’t float away again. “Tía? Would it help if you could see my boyfriends? They’d like to meet you.”

Oh right. She was supposed to be talking to Julie about her boyfriends today. Someone had asked her to help with that. Had her boyfriends asked? No, that didn’t make sense. She hadn’t met them yet. Or had she? She nodded her head slowly, forgetting the original question.

“Okay, can you close your eyes for a second?” Victoria did as she was told, closing her eyes. After a second, she heard the sound of a tinny song coming out through electric speakers. The pitch was giving her a headache. Then in came the sound of a much more pleasant guitar, and then the sound of a rhythm being tapped out. Everything is vibrating, so Tori instinctively grabs the table top in case it also decided to float away (she hoped it wouldn’t).

“Okay, Tía. You can open your eyes now.”

Victoria opens her eyes and blinks back the discomfort of the too bright sun. And there, sitting across from her are Julie’s two bandmates. Her boyfriends, she’d called them. They’re both looking at her worriedly, and one looks like he’s been crying, his eyes wet and red. The shaggy haired brunette, Luke she remembers, is playing an acoustic guitar. The other boy was Reggie. Wasn’t he the one Julie had been talking to when she’d been hugging the air? But that didn’t make sense. He wasn’t air. He was right there. She could see him sitting across from her. And he was tap, tap, tapping out a rhythm to match Luke’s guitar on the surface of the table. His tapping was shaking the table, but it thankfully was on the ground, so she relaxed her grip.

Tori turned to see her sobrina had pulled up some sort of application on her phone. She’d set the device on the table in front of her, turned lengthwise. On the screen of her phone was a little mini piano keyboard, and Julie was playing along, matching the melody and rhythm the two boys were setting on the other side of the table.

“Tía, this is Luke and Reggie,” the boys both smiled to her and she found her own lips tugging in a smile just ever so slightly at the edges. “They’re my boyfriends. And they’re very happy to meet you officially.”

Victoria looked back over to Julie, “I thought there were three.”

Julie nods, “Yes, Alex. But he’s gay, so my relationship with him is a little different than Luke and Reggie. He’s out today with his other boyfriend, or else I’m sure he would like to meet you too. Maybe another day?”

“I was supposed to talk to you about your boyfriends…” Victoria spoke out slowly.

“Yeah, dad asked you to. I don’t think he was expecting this to happen,” Julie shot her a melancholy smile.

Tori nodded again, “So you’re having sex with three boys?” The words come out slowly, her brain struggling to process what she was supposed to be asking. It feels like her mouth is filled with sand as she tries to form words.

“Technically yes,” Julie explained, “I do have three partners, but I’ve only had sex with two of them. I’ve never had sex with Alex.”

“Because he’s gay?”

“Yes,” Julie smiled at her lightly, “We do things all together as a group, but I don’t have sex with Alex when we’re together.”

Victoria turned her eyes to the boys across the table. They were still playing music. Why were they still playing music? They were having a conversation. It was rude. She needs to tell them that. So she did.

“We’re talking about Julie’s boyfriends. Your playing is rude.”

Luke shot her a floppy smile, “ _We’re_ Julie’s boyfriends.”

Reggie kept hitting the table, “And we can’t stop playing.”

“Why?” Both boys shoot their eyes to Julie.

“You want to see my boyfriends, right Tía?” Victoria nodded, “Then we need to keep playing, okay?”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t, but I’m not sure you’re ready to know the reason why.”

That made Tori pout, she was the aunt here. She was the adult. “Why not?” Gosh, whoever just asked that sounded like a petulant child.

“Because it’s really hard to explain Tía. There’s a lot of stuff. And the last time we tried to show you, you got really scared. And I think you’re still a little shaken up. Dad will be here soon. Then we can go home, and we can explain everything. Okay?”

Victoria nodded. A few moments later, she’s hearing a voice shouting. It’s saying “Julie!” Hey, that was the name of her sobrina. What a coincidence.

“Over here Papí!” her Julie called. Her hands were still on the little piano, and the boys were still playing their real and makeshift instruments.

Ray came running around the path, Carlos hot on his heels. Tori knew them! Carlos was her sobrino. And Ray… Ray was her sister’s husband. But where was Rose? Tori leaned to look down the path and didn’t see her sister. That was too bad. Her sister would be able to help them. She could help her understand why her cuñado was here. Maybe help Julie and Carlos find their dad, wherever he was. Yes, Rose would know. Maybe she’ll get here soon?

Ray finally made his way to the table and got down on one knee in front of her. That didn’t make sense. He was already married to her sister…

“Tori? Hey. You okay?” he asked softly as he brushed a hand against her cheek.

“I’ve asked her that a few times,” Julie explained beside her, “She hasn’t given me a clear answer. She’s not really making a lot of sense. I think she might be in shock Papí.”

Ray turned to her sobrina. Why did he think he could just talk to her sobrina so friendly like that? He was a stranger. But, no. Victoria knew him, didn’t she? Maybe Julie knew him too.

“I’m so sorry Julie. I didn’t mean for your conversation to go like this. What happened?”

“I fucked up,” Reggie said from the other side of the table, when Victoria glances his way, he seems to be crying again. “I’m sorry Ray. I didn’t mean to. I j-just… I-I sh-shouldn’t h-have… I’m s-sor –”

“I guess the song’s over,” Victoria noted. Ray, Julie, Carlos, and Luke all turn to her in an instant. Her eyes flit between them, “They always disappear when the song’s over,” she explained, as though it were obvious. But then she turns her head to Luke, and glares down at the guitar he’s strumming. If the song was over, then why was he still playing? And the song must be over, because Reggie definitely isn’t there anymore.

She turns to her brother, “Ray. You have to help. I think gravity is broken today.”

“Is it?” he questioned.

“Yes. Bowls, and phones, and sobrinas. They’re all floating.” He smiled at her softly.

“Okay. How about we head back to our house? I think we can figure out the gravity problem better over there. How does that sound?”

That seems to make more sense than what has been happening in the time she’s been sitting at the table, so she nods and moves to stand. She teeters a little bit, but Julie and Ray are both putting hands on her to keep her upright. The sounds of the song have finally ended. Good. It was about time. It was _rude_ that they had been playing while they’d talked.

As they make their way from the park Victoria notices two things. One is that both of Julie’s boyfriends have gone. Maybe they both left once the music stopped, just like they normally did. Oh dear. She didn’t get to talk to them the way she was supposed to. The second is that the bowls of ice cream float down the path and land in a garbage can just as they hit the parking lot. Ray must be right; it must be the park that has gravity all broken. Ray can fix it though. And then maybe he can help her find her sobrina’s dad. Julie had been waiting for him…

* * *

It’s a full day of sleep before Victoria feels able to process exactly what had happened in the park. And it’s several shots of tequila later before she’s willing to admit the existence of ghosts. When Ray had told her Julie’s love life was complicated, this was not what she had been expecting (another shot for good measure). At least talking the full situation over with Ray and coming to terms with the arrangement has her feeling slightly less insane. If she’s gone loco, at least she and Ray are crazy together.

A few days later, once she’s calmed down from the whole experience, she’s able to actually have a conversation with the band. Out in the studio, with proper instruments and not a phone and a picnic table. Per Julie’s promise, she even gets to meet Alex. Reggie cries again as he explains how sorry he is, and the rest of the band work with her to reassure him she’s not mad at him. She had just been freaked out, and her brain didn’t take it well.

Victoria shoos Carlos and Ray out of the room to have a real relationship heart to heart with the band. Tori can’t exactly threaten their lives, so she threatens an exorcism instead if they ever treat her Julie as anything other than the princess she is. They all assure her that they take good care of their angel, and would never hurt her.

When she asks the follow-up question to Julie on whether they are indeed taking “care” of her, her sobrina flushes crimson, the rest of the band following suit. Yes, she assures. Yes, it’s very good; and yes, they take what precautions they need to; and no, they never pressure her to do anything that makes her uncomfortable.

She leaves the band in the studio after an hour or so to inevitably have a communal freak-out about her interrogation. As she makes her way up the path to the house, Victoria looks up to the sky.

“Rose, I don’t know what the hell is going on in the universe. I don’t know what you have planned for Julie or those boys. But I think you put your daughter in good hands. I think they’ll be okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spanish/Spanglish Translations. English is my first language, so I am relying on translators and my limited experience for the Spanish. If there is a better, or more authentic way to communicate the Spanish language segments, I am open to edits if you leave suggestions in the comments.
> 
> Mija = A contraction of the Spanish “Mi Hija” meaning “My Daughter”  
> Sobrina/Sobrino = Niece/Nephew  
> Cuñado = Brother-in-law  
> Pan de Mallorca = Puerto Rican breakfast pastries covered in powdered sugar   
> Tía = Aunt  
> ¿Entiendes? = Understand?  
> Cariña = Sweetheart  
> Loco = Crazy
> 
> Ray and Victoria’s conversation -   
> “I’m worried about my daughter”   
> “Of course you are. She’s your daughter. You’re allowed. But little girls grow up over time. She’s almost eighteen. You have to know this would happen eventually.”   
> “Yes, but I didn’t think it would happen without her mother here to help her.”   
> “Do know Rose talked to her before she passed away? That she took her to the doctor and got her a prescription for birth control?”  
> “What? No. She never said.”   
> “Typical. Rose probably knew you’d freak out.”  
> “I just want my daughter safe Tori.”  
> “I know.”


End file.
